Monsters With Familiar Faces (The Cook, book 3)
by fire-is-my-happy-place
Summary: In the aftermath of terrible violence, the Cook is left to learn how to live with herself and the person she has become. Will she come to some peace with herself and being a mercenary, or will it destroy her?
1. Prologue

In the half-light cast by a dispenser, the huddled figures on the mattress twitched in their mutual dreams. The figure on the outside, head shaved to stubble, dug his fingers into the arm of the woman behind him. His eyes squeezed over and over, wrinkling, and he curled slightly, pulling the arm around him in toward his chest. His mouth moved, a faint shape in the darkness, as if he were speaking to someone in his dreams. The arm around him tightened and he gasped, his eyes flying open, still dulled with sleep. After a few blinks, they closed again, lips still shuddering.

The figure behind him lay pressed tightly against his spine, arm flexing with her dreams. Her lips were pressed to the nape of his neck, moving restlessly as if she spoke. Her eyebrows flexed down, and with the cant of her lips, it was clear that whatever she dreamed about was equally disturbing as the dream of the figure she clung to. Her head shook momentarily back and forth, as if trying to fling an idea from her head. She snarled once in her sleep, and the man in front of her whimpered. Without waking, she tucked her arm in more tightly around him and he sighed in his sleep, hands relaxing from their white-knuckled grip on the arm she had thrown over him.

The RED Spy sighed very, very quietly. He had to check, as much an invasion of privacy as he was committing, to see whether or not she'd be all right, and whether or not she was being well treated. The collar around her neck answered that question in the negative, and like any agent he'd sent on a rough mission, he expected that she'd be a mess for awhile afterward. He was proud of her—even while he was still recruiting for the French government, most of his agents hadn't had an assignment as tough as what she'd done to get rid of those three monsters. When the BLU team had loosened up, they'd given him enough information to take a good guess at the events of the last few days, and he was frankly impressed. Those days had been hellish for him, though he'd made much less of an obvious display of his tension than his lover or the firebug, and really hellish for her. They all knew what sort of men the BLU Soldier, Spy, and Medic were. Everyone, at one point or another, had the misfortune of being alone with those men on the battlefield, and they had seen women who spent time with the BLU Spy or Soldier come back to the bar, haunted and terrified. Some women did not come back at all.

He'd forgotten how helpless he felt when sending an agent out, and how nerve-wracking it was to know that their lives were out of his hands. He'd tried, for the most part, to find agents there was no chance that he'd be attached to, but this one had gotten to him. He knew himself too well to have not known it was coming. He'd always had a thing for ordinary people who took on extraordinary strengths under pressure, and the combination of prickly brusqueness, compliance, and desire to be one of them had done the rest. She was ordinary in appearance—he'd seen enough naked bodies and faces not to be particularly impressed by anything on the outside of a person—but what had been exposed through pressure was extraordinary.

He smiled wryly in the darkness at the two figures on the bed. Of course, now came the really difficult part. Once the pressure was off, what would she do with the damage that had, no doubt, been inflicted on her? The agents he'd recruited had often performed well enough under pressure at first, but decayed almost immediately once they had time to introspect. A few times, he'd had to put them out of their misery before they wrecked a situation he'd worked for months to set up. He'd been kind enough to do it with an opiate overdose whenever he could, letting them die easily.

He shifted carefully, slowly enough to make the whisper of his slacks inaudible. This one, he couldn't kill. They could, however, subdue her if necessary. He'd rather not, but they'd do what they had to. It remained to be seen if she could learn to compartmentalize well enough to be allowed off base, and whether she'd survive and thrive. Few did.

The Spy also had to admit he was curious to see what sort of shape the BLU team was in after losing their three most aggressive and dangerous members. He'd done enough scouting to be able to find his way around the base, and more than enough to be able to locate her. He'd actually arrived in time to follow her into the base—the sex acts she'd gotten up to with their direct supervisor had been, if he were that kind of man, quite possibly the finest blackmail he was likely to get on the woman. However, the woman was both dangerous and he had no need to blackmail her, so he'd decided to merely enjoy the view and commit it to memory, to describe to his lover later. He agreed with Miss Pauling. If the boy wanted any, he could ask directly and take his chances like anyone else. Asking was, in his opinion, worth it. He'd very nearly stroked himself watching them, a happy accident that turned to a graphic and rather excellent bit of impromptu porn. Finding out his direct supervisor had once been a prostitute didn't bother him in the least. He'd often recruited sex workers when he had been working for the French government, finding their prosaic practicality and the sheer volume of their personal connections incredibly useful for infiltration.

The Spy stretched, knuckling his lower back, and decided he'd seen enough. She appeared to be fine. The BLU Engineer appeared to be no particular threat, not that he'd expected the man to be, and there was no need to help her with anything. He hated to admit it, but for a civilian, she'd done a professional job of surviving—she had not frozen, had not succumbed to the pressure that they had no doubt put on her, and had been able to convince two experts to kill each other despite their decades of experience surviving.

The Spy paused for a moment, hand on the door knob. _I can't think of her that way anymore_ , he thought. _She's not a civilian_.

He let himself out of the door. The Engineer was going to shit himself when he woke up to find all his turrets sapped, but he had to do it. The Spy let himself out of the outer base doors and trotted across the mile or so of intervening sand easily, the faint crunch of his steps fading into the darkness. He let himself into the Sniper's camper, where his lover sat up, waiting for him.

"Well," the Sniper asked.

"She's fine." After a moment, he added. "Well, all except for the bad dreams. I think we should take some pride in the way she turned out. Very few people would have survived even a few days with our colleagues. Of course, it remains to be seen whether she'll be all right after all this." The Spy unbuttoned his white shirt and laid it over a chair. "I think, however, that she'll survive."

His lover reached for him, sliding calloused fingers around the Spy's sides and pulling him into the circle of his arms. "She's had an effect on us, as well."

The Spy froze, looking down at him. _I didn't know you think that way_ , he thought, startled. After a long pause, he answered. "Yes, she has."

"Do you think that's why they sent her?"

The Spy sighed and laced his hands around the back of the Sniper's neck. "Likely, _Bête_. Quite likely. Men were not meant to live this long, through dying repeatedly. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it becomes to stay sane, to remember anything but this. If I had known what was going to happen, I'm not sure I would have taken the job."

The Sniper leaned forward, resting his head against the Spy for a moment, then looked up at him. "Did you choose?"

"In a way," the Spy said softly. "I could have killed myself before she came for me. I sometimes wonder if that wouldn't have been better." Perhaps it was just his real age, or the experience of sending someone out again into danger, but the thought of permanently dying remained an old friend—a comfort not to be ignored, the knowledge that with a little careful sabotage, all this could end.

The Sniper sighed, then pulled the Spy down into his lap, running his calloused hands over the planes of his lover's chest, wordlessly speaking to him. After a moment, the Spy relaxed into his lover's caress, accepting the silent reminder that for better or worse, they belonged—though the word made them both laugh, since anyone who knew the migratory habits of the profession knew that the idea of belonging was hilarious—to each other.

The Spy led them both to the low bed against the camper wall, shedding and neatly folding his slacks, leaving his socks in his shoes and crawling into bed in a silky pair of briefs. The Sniper left his clothing where it fell, and crawled into bed to hold his lover. Neither man commented on the fact that it was unusual for them to spend this much time together though it was there, between them: a change that neither man would have asked for.

Both were grateful for it, the simple comfort of knowing that the other man was there, and that they knew themselves to be in company.


	2. Chapter 1

The Cook woke at dawn, with a convulsive shudder that propelled her away from the sleeping Engineer. She lay there, back pressed to the cold wall, for some time. Her head was full of sharp fragments, memory and bits of her dreams, the BLU Soldier sitting companionably beside her and putting an arm around her shoulders, both of them looking at the supine form of the BLU Engineer. A murmuring in her ears was his voice, pointing out the BLU Engineer's weaknesses, telling her what those weaknesses deserved, and the sound of his laughter—low and nauseatingly intimate. The noise lingered in her ears despite the fact that she had awoken, an echo that could not die because it was a part of her, because he was a part of her as he'd promised he would be. The Cook shivered, focusing her eyes on the rumpled lines of the Engineer's overalls and the curve of his back, little visceral details that made up the waking world.

The BLU Engineer rolled over, fisting the sleep from his eyes. "Bad dream?" His voice was syrupy, slow and deep.

"Something like that."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"No." _Not now_ , she added silently, _not ever do I want to talk about that dream_.

"Wanna talk about something else?" His eyes sharpened, taking in her pale face, the collar they hadn't removed yet, and her distant stare. "How about we get rid of that thing around your neck?"

Her fingers rose to it, and he watched them tremble as they skated over the leather. The Engineer sat up and slowly pulled himself to standing, then tottered over to a tool box, coming back with a pair of metal shears.

"If you'll roll over, I can cut the lock and we can get that thing off you."

Without a word, she rolled face down on the mattress. He cut the lock with a grunt, then pulled the padlock from the ring and unbuckled it. She pulled the collar off and he took it from her shaking hand, putting the whole thing on a bench and coming back to sit on the edge of the mattress.

"It's a bit early for breakfast," the Engineer said, awkwardly searching for a conversational topic.

The Cook took a deep breath, eyes focusing on the blur of his silhouette. "I'm not hungry, and I don't want to make food right now."

"Oh! No, I didn't mean you had to make me anything!" The Engineer held his hands up in front of him, clearly embarrassed.

For a moment, she wanted to slap him. The urge was terrifyingly strong, and she had no idea where it came from. In her memory, the BLU Soldier sat next to her, arm around her shoulders, and laughed. She swallowed heavily, touching her bare neck. The Engineer followed her hand with his eyes, clearly confused.

"Wh-What's going on in there?" His voice was hushed.

She shook her head violently, trying to stop thinking about the Soldier. "Sorry. I'm just…."

"Memory?" The Engineer shifted, lips turning down. "Me, too, sometimes."

"Memory and the dream." The Cook sat up abruptly, and the Engineer cringed for a moment. Her teeth ground and she stopped them with an effort. "I think I'm angry. I'm not sure why."

"I can understand that." The Engineer snorted. "I'm pretty angry myself."

"I'm angry at the wrong things." She leaned back against the wall, eyeing his silhouette. "Besides," she said softly, "isn't it pointless to be angry at the dead?"

The Engineer didn't answer her, instead pulling his knees to his chest. She was struck again by how thin and fragile he seemed, how unlike his RED counterpart. The Cook sighed. "You know, I probably am hungry. Wanna keep me company while I make something?"

He blinked. "Sure. I can be helpful, too."

"I'll hold you to it." The Cook pushed herself up and sighed. "I only have the one spare set of glasses. If they keep disappearing, I'm going to be blind as hell."

"Pretty sure they kept your glasses. I'll meet you in the kitchen. I'm going to go poke through the Soldier's room." The Engineer stood and walked to the door. Opening it, he swore loudly. "Fucking goddamn it. Your spy sapped my turrets."

She blinked. "He's not really my spy." The Cook wasn't sure how she felt about the fact that he'd snuck in to check on her—the idea that she'd managed to sleep through him standing there, watching her, felt oddly invasive, even creepy. Coupled with the last time they'd spent time alone together, she wasn't sure she wanted him to sneak into bedrooms at night to watch her. Walking past the blood stain on the stairs, she wondered whether or not she'd have privacy on either base again. Preoccupied, she walked into the BLU Pyro's back.

He whipped around, grabbing her wrists. "What the—" The Pyro took a breath. "Ah," he said. "It's you."

She rotated her wrists, breaking his grip, and he let her. "I'm going to the kitchen. Let me go."

"Sure," he said. "Me, too. You a coffee-drinker?"

The Cook stared at him for a moment, disbelief making her gaze blank. "I'm not really in the mood to talk right now."

The Pyro cocked his head, watching her for a moment. "Angry," he finally said, letting the back of the word go up into a question.

"Something like that." She went to walk around him and he turned, following her and keeping pace down the halls and into the kitchen. He leaned back against the counter and watched her pause, staring into the open refrigerator.

"What," she said, voice distant with the effort of holding in her seemingly bottomless reserves of rage, "do you want from me?"

He watched her back bowing as she stared into the refrigerator and said nothing. She pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator, stacking it against her chest with a heel of cheddar and the limp contents of the vegetable drawer. The Cook turned, kicking the refrigerator door closed with the back of her foot. Putting the contents of her arms on the counter, she turned.

"I said what do you want from me," she growled. "I won't ask again."

The Pyro took a slow breath. "I want many things. I want to know what kind of person you are. I want to know what kind of woman chooses to do what you did. I want to know what kind of woman manages to talk two selfish men into killing each other." He let his eyes wander down her. "Either you are fucking spectacular in bed or you are a hell of a manipulator."

She stared at him, bed hair canting his short, dark locks into chaotic spikes, tattooed Molotov cocktail on his forearm flexing as he shifted balance from foot to foot, bare despite the cold. He was tense, she realized. Something on his mind, or perhaps just something troubling him, but the show he was making of being relaxed—leaning back on his elbows—was precisely that, a show. With a shock, she realized that she made the Pyro nervous and it pleased her. He had pushed at her, trying to get her to respond, trying to test what she would allow him to do, and she made him nervous. Her anger flowed back in, hot and acidic, and she was grateful for it. He deserved to be nervous. She gave him a leisurely, head to foot survey before responding.

"I did what I had to for my own reasons." Dusting her hands off on the overalls, she walked slowly into the Pyro's space, stopping a fraction of an inch from him and reaching out to pin his hands to the counter. "Does it worry you?"

A half-smile tilted one of the corners of his mouth. "Sugar," he said, " _venit novus princeps, idem princeps antiquae_? Is the new boss same as the old boss?"

She shuddered, thinking of the dream and the Soldier's whisper in her ear. The Pyro reached out to snag her wrists, blindingly fast, and turned them both, pinning her against the counter.

"Well," he said, "is the new boss same as the old boss?"

The Cook looked up at him. "If I was your boss, do you really think I'd be the same as those fucks?"

He looked down at her, letting her see the skeptical rage in his hazel eyes. She glared back, letting him see the rage that felt like it was going to burn out of her skin and turn her into a pillar of flame.

"Let me ask you something," she said. "You itching to have another close encounter with my kneecap?"

The Pyro looked down and scrambled backward a step, hands protectively over himself. She pushed him away. "Don't keep tempting me," she said, voice shaking with rage. "I have had all the shit I intend to take for awhile."

He eyed her. "All right," he said, straightening carefully. "I need to know what kind of person they hired, what kind of person could figure out how to get those fucks to kill each other. I want to know if I'm in danger, and whether or not you're about to fuck things up worse."

She sighed, exhausted. "Not on purpose, I won't. I'm not going to be… myself… for awhile, I think."

"Or you'll be more yourself, the unpleasant bits everyone learns to cover up," he snapped. "I'm trying to figure out how to feel about you, Honey, and you aren't making it easy."

A tremor ran through her. "Do not," she panted, "call me honey."

He growled at her. "Rage, I get. Rage, I like. The bit where you talk people into killing each other makes me fucking nervous."

She didn't realize she was laughing until the high-pitched cackle was bouncing off the walls around them and fell to the floor, knees cut out from under her. He looked at the blank expression on her face and the horrible sight of her mouth laughing when the rest of her face was empty. The Engineer rounded the corner, her glasses in his hand, and saw her on the floor with the Pyro standing over her.

"What the fuck," he growled at the Pyro. When the Pyro wheeled on his heel, the Engineer flinched, then stood his ground. "Can't you stop the fucking mind games for a little while?"

"Boy, she put some starch in your fucking drawers, didn't she?" The Pyro looked the Engineer up and down. "Does she fuck the backbone into everyone?"

The Cook, unseen behind him, pulled herself up on the counter and grabbed a knife. The Engineer, seeing her approach the Pyro's back with a strangely blank expression on her face, knife raised to stab, flailed. "No," he whispered. "Please, no."

The Pyro turned in time to throw himself backward, just out of reach of the blade, knocking over the Engineer and falling on him. The Cook stood over them both, blank expression on her face, then shook herself.

"The butcher's bill for the last few days," she whispered, "is steep." She looked over at the knife, then down at the men on the floor. "Don't… push me. I'm not all right."

The Pyro looked up at her, surprise at war with defensive anger on his face. "I have to fucking know, but I got at least one question answered. You're as much a sick fuck as the rest of us."

She looked at him, eyes dry and reddened. "I didn't start out that way."

"You keep telling yourself that, Sugar." The Pyro stood, backing up. "You keep telling yourself that."

The Cook finished breakfast without speaking again, the Engineer handing her anything he thought she might need but otherwise keeping his distance.

She walked across the intervening sand under the mid-morning sun, crossing the buildings that constituted their battleground, bullet casings and sand crunching underfoot in the boots she'd borrowed from the BLU Engineer. The buildings were chewed by gun fire, and she wondered if anyone ever replaced them, if they were rebuilt or simply allowed to decay into nothing. _This is the same route_ , she thought dully, _that I took to get away from him the first time_. _The same route I ran with the RED Spy_.

Her feet kept carrying her, passing the shooting range, passing the edges of the RED base and to the base door. Her hands lifted to push open the door, letting her into the base proper, feet walking her through the hall and to her room. She shut the door with a click and put the desk chair under the doorknob, stripped nude and walked to the bathroom. She paused there, thinking about the chef's knives on her chest of drawers.

"But there's no point," she said quietly. "I'll simply respawn."

The Cook turned the shower on, running it mostly hot, and stepped into it. She stood there, burning, simply letting the water run down her for some time before using the shampoo she'd bought with her and scrubbing herself from head to foot, unable to stop herself from wondering why she bothered. When she finally turned the water off, she heard someone hammering on her door.

She didn't bother with a towel, simply stepping out of the shower and walking, dripping puddles on the floor, to the door.

"What do you want," she yelled.

"To see you. To see you're okay." She recognized the RED Soldier's voice with a sigh and pressed her forehead to the door, exhausted in ways she could not describe.

The Cook pulled the chair out from under the door and opened it. The hall was full, the eyes of the mercenaries in it wandering from the unfaded pattern of bruises on her face and body down to the rings still threaded through her nipples. The shock reflected on their faces was as painful as a slap to her, and she wanted them all to leave, to let her simply be alone. When she spoke, she was surprised to realize that her voice was gentle despite the overwhelming desire to snarl.

"I can't," she said, leaning heavily against the door. "I just can't."

" _Kätzchen_ , would you like a time of dreamless sleep?" The Medic's eyes were nearly bruised in their shadows. "I can give you dreamless sleep."

She looked at the Medic and he saw the horror in her eyes, calling to his own horror. "I can give you sleep without dreams, _Kätzchen_ ," he said softly. "A time of rest for the mind."

Her mouth worked soundlessly, the screaming morass of her thoughts pressing inarticulately against her tongue, too many for her to give voice.

"We can make the choice for you, little girl," the Engineer said softly. "We can tell you what to do, if you like, just until you can take care of yourself again."

The noise that came out of her mouth was an inhuman bellow, and her fingers knotted in the scruff on her scalp. The Medic reached out gently for an arm and pried it down, slipping a needle into it easily. She looked up at him, betrayal sagging her mouth open, and he winced. The RED Soldier reached out for her, swinging her up in his arms and walking her back to her bed. He laid her on it, tucking her in. She dug her fingers into his arm when he tried to stand.

"No," she said, tears spilling hot down her cheeks. "You stay. Hold me."

The Soldier kicked his boots off, gesturing over his shoulder as the room emptied. The RED Pyro, last out of the room, shut the door gently behind himself. The Soldier crawled over her, pulling her head into his chest. The sobs racking her were strong enough to make her gag, and she ground her face into his chest and shook convulsively. He murmured something she couldn't hear, low and angry, and hugged her to him hard enough to drive the air out of her lungs before releasing her enough to let her breathe again.

As the drugs started to kick in, she realized he was singing quietly, badly, as much a grumbling, tuneless bellow as any noise she'd made. When she pushed away, he let her go, eyes searching her face.

"You don't gotta say anything," he said softly. "It's okay. I'll stay and you don't have to tell me anything."

Her eyelids slid down, heavy, and he leaned forward and kissed them, hands smoothing down her back, smoothing her down into the well of unconsciousness, deep and dreamless.


	3. Chapter 2

The Cook woke with her back to the room, curled tightly. The room was bright with the midday sun, filling the dimpled cinder blocks with pale shadows and pouring gold over the familiar, faded maroon of her blankets. She ran her fingers over the blanket, reassuring herself that she was awake, that she was back in her own room. Soft breathing behind her told her that the Soldier was asleep, cuddled close to her back and radiating warmth. He shifted, the arm around her tightening, and sighed. She reached down absently, running her fingers along his arm, and he tightened it again, pulling her to his chest.

"Yeh all right, lass?"

She looked down at the arm, then rolled over to face the RED Demo. His eye patch had been pushed up by the pillow, which had left lines on his cheek. The relaxation slowly faded from his face as she stared at him, and he straightened the eye patch self-consciously, hiding the sunken curve of his eyelid.

"Where did Solly go," she asked.

The Demo stared at her for a moment, something like hurt slowly spreading across his face, and his arm loosened. "Lass, yeh been out for a full day. Yeh can't blame the man for needing to shower and stretch his legs."

His shoulders slowly rose, the hurt on his face becoming tension in the body pressed to hers. The Cook sighed. _Please_ , she thought, _please. I can't. I don't have enough me to comfort you_. She wrapped her arms around his neck anyway, feeling drained but able to prevent herself from responding to the hurt she could see in him. In a distant way, she realized she felt guilty.

"I'm not unhappy to see you, Demo," she said quietly, "just surprised. I've had a lot of unpleasant surprises recently and I'm a little jumpy."

The wary look stayed on his face. "We've taken turns staying here with yeh. The only of us not to nap with yeh has been the Doc and his lover."

She blinked. "Why?"

"Lass, we… we were worried." He wanted to add the words terrified, ashamed, afraid, and homicidally angry, but had no idea where to put them or even if he should tell her, if it would make things worse. For lack of anything to say, he squeezed her. "We were worried about yeh."

She sighed into his neck, cuddling her head into the crook of his shoulder to feel the muscle slowly loosen. His arms tightened again, and she hated him for a moment, that he would need comforting, hated them all for needing comfort or a response and not simply letting her alone. She felt like she was made of glass, as if she would shatter at any second, and every word she had to exchange, every act of reassurance cracked her a little more.

He could feel her back tensing, and while he didn't know why, he did know enough to ask. "Lass, can I do something for yeh?"

Her voice was muffled by his shoulder. "I don't know what I want right now." _I want to be left alone_ , she thought, _but no one is going to let me be alone_.

"Lass, can we maybe feed yeh? It'd be a nice change."

"I'm not hungry." She realized after the words left her mouth that her tone was as angry as she felt.

The Demo froze. Depression, apathy, anger—the Medic had talked to them all about the likely problems, listing them with a clinical precision that had made the situation no less disturbing. Of them, only a few had any experience with the kind of personal assault they knew it was safe to suppose she had endured. The Spy had volunteered enough information to make it clear he knew more than they had all thought about the topic, and had simply said at the conclusion of it that they would want to watch her closely, and that she may try to harm herself.

He had also said, drily, that the first man to proposition her for sex could expect a knife in the kidneys until he grew tired of it, a formidable and rather frightening proposition from a man who could, quite literally, be anywhere.

"Please, lass," the Demo said softly. "We'd really like the chance to make you something. Yeh don't have to eat a lot of it, but we'd like to at least try to give yeh something."

He could feel her going wooden, withdrawing, some part of her drifting away—it was terrifying, the body in his arms somehow becoming less alive. He reached out, tilting her chin up, and found rage on her face. Inhuman, horrible rage that, with a shiver, she wiped from her expression, leaving a dullness that was just as terrifying.

"Please," he whispered. "Please, lass."

"Sure," she said, voice flat.

He rolled out of bed and pulled her up. She let him, let him dress and steer her body out the door by the shoulders and through the halls, picking up the Soldier still wet from the shower and the Pyro, who happened to walk out of the living room in time to see them. In the kitchen, she moved mechanically toward the refrigerator, and the Soldier had to pry her hands from it.

"No, Rosie. Let us." He looked over at the Demo. "Would you pull a few chairs in here?"

The Demo came back with three chairs from the table. The Soldier pushed her down gently into the nearest chair, smoothing his hands down her arms.

"How's she doing," he asked over her head.

Before the Demo could answer, she shuddered, pulling herself away from the static between her ears, and looked up at the Soldier. "You could ask me."

"Sure. Okay, Rosie," he said, resting his fists on his hips. "How are you doing?"

She looked at him, the water still beaded on his face and neck, his shirt sticking to him, barefoot in the cold of the base. He smiled at her, a tiny half-smile that quirked only one side of his mouth up into something that looked more like grief than amusement. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out of it. The question was enormous, looming over her head like a mountain, the mountain back inside her head as she clung to the stone, not knowing whether to climb or let go, or even if she could do either.

The Soldier leaned forward and down, crouching on the balls of his feet and holding the edges of the chair. "Rosie-love," he said softly, "can we feed you? It would make us feel better."

"I'm not hungry."

"Please, Rosie-love, as a favor?" That same half-smile was back, incongruous beneath the worry in his eyes.

"I…." Her stomach growled once, loudly, and she clasped her hands over it.

"Come on, Rosie-love, I've been dying to know if my grilled cheese is any good."

"Okay," she said softly, looking at the worry still shadowing his face, guilt at causing it exhausting her.

"Thank you, Rosie-love," he said quietly, and stood. Putting his hands back on his hips, the Soldier turned to the Demo and Pyro. "Unless one of you has a better idea, I'm doing grilled cheese."

With a faint blush, the Demo offered to make tomato soup. "I don't know how to make the real soup, but I've a can or two."

The Pyro shrugged. "I'm not really much of a cook, and I think people would rather I didn't, so I'll keep her company."

The Soldier shot him a serious look. "Be nice."

The Pyro eyed him, annoyance piercing the fog of his medications. "It'll be fine." Pulling his chair close to the Cook, he reached out for her hand, capturing it despite her flinch and holding it gently. With the discretion of the mentally ill, he didn't push his luck by speaking to her. Instead, he simply held her hand, smoothing a scarred thumb over the back of it in small circles and slowly rubbing the tension out of it.

She watched them, the Demo carefully heating cans of soup and the Soldier trying not to burn bread. She watched the looks they snuck over their shoulders, checking on her where she sat silently and the Pyro, who was seemingly content to sit there and hold her hand. She watched the Demo portion soup into four bowls, watched the Soldier cut the grilled cheese into triangles. Some part of her nagged her to tell them she appreciated it, to show them that she understood they were trying, that she understood that they were trying to make her feel better. She should be grateful. She was grateful, but her arms felt heavy, leaden, and her mouth full of something thick and muddy. When they carried the plates and bowls out to the dining room, the Pyro leaned forward.

"Brave Cook," he said quietly, "you have to fight it some. I know it's heavy and it hurts, but if you let it, it'll keep dragging you further down."

Her head turned slowly until she could see him. His eyes, focused on hers, searched her face over and over. "We can help some, but you have to refuse to ride it down. It will drag you down until you are gone."

"How am I supposed to feel," she said softly.

"Anything," the Pyro said, and squeezed her hand. "You're supposed to feel anything. Right now you're feeling nothing, aren't you?"

"Yes," she said, the word a hissing whisper.

The Pyro took a breath and stood, pulling her to her feet as the Demo and Soldier walked in. He stayed holding her hand while they carried the chairs back into the dining room and walked hand-in-hand with her into the room, sitting down still holding her hand. _Like children_ , she thought. _Children holding hands because it's dark_.

He refused to let her hand go, eating with his left hand and jiggling hers to urge her to take another bite. She ate what they'd placed in front of her absently, mechanically, the table silent but for the clink of spoons against bowls. When she finished eating, the men sighed, nearly in unison.

Her eyebrows met in embarrassed frustration at the concerted attention and the fact that they seemed as if they wanted to break into applause that she would have eaten. "Stop that," she growled. "I ate. Nothing exciting about it."

"Thank you, Rosie-love," the Soldier said gently. "Would you like to watch a movie?"

The Pyro stood, still holding her hand, and pulled her to her feet. "We'll go watch a movie. Go ask Engie if he'll part with some of his collection. Something happy, maybe."

"No," she said, the firmness of her own voice surprising her. "No, it doesn't have to be happy. I'm not… I'm not that broken." _Please_ , she thought, _please. I'm not that bad, am I?_

"Of course not," the Pyro said quickly, to beat everyone else in the room. "Wanna watch a creature feature? I always liked those and Engie has a pretty big collection of them. We could make popcorn, and I know other people would probably like to get the chance to watch one. Engie always ends up fighting with Medic over whether or not it's possible to make the monsters and how you'd make them. One of these days, we're all going to wake up to a giant carnivorous lizard or giant loaf of sentient bread or something because one of them decided to try and prove their point."

"Carnivorous bread?" She realized that the corners of her mouth were starting to tilt up a little and she wanted to kiss the man in front of her, grateful to be anything but angry and adrift in the mist.

"Why not," the Pyro said with a shrug. "It isn't any weirder than _Santa Claus Conquers the Martians_."

By the time they'd gotten the movie out of the Engineer and started it, the living room had filled. The Pyro kept her hand, and with a little discrete jostling and a muttered conversation behind her, the Soldier had her other hand, thigh pressed to hers.

The Cook looked over at him. "Why you?"

The Soldier had the grace to look embarrassed. "I told them that this was a case where the crazy motherfuckers had a better chance of understanding what to do."

From her other side, the Pyro said drily, "That's what we're good at. Understanding crazy."

"So they're sending the crazy in to deal with the crazy," she said, irritation making her voice cut the air.

"Well," the Pyro said, an edge in his voice, "you could get offended or you could appreciate the fact that there are people around who get it."

She sighed, rebuked, and let them stroke her hands. The movie started with a crackling noise, the screen mimicking the flicker of an old projector. She looked around the room, catching them all stealing looks at her.

"Please stop that," she said. "Just… watch the movie."

The looks stopped as the title came up, and while it ran she was able to simply watch the movie. Even after it ended, listening to the Medic vigorously debate the Engineer on how to create giant radioactive snails, she was able to forget for a time, laughing while they debated how one might go about splicing the necessary genes to increase the snails' size—the Engineer was busy explaining, quite earnestly, that if they started with the size they could simply have escargot as a trial batch finished maturing. The Medic countered with a surprisingly detailed discussion of why the flesh would actually be too tough to eat. The debate from there became increasingly ornate and silly, and she ignored it as she contemplated how one might go about making escargot out of a twenty foot tall snail and tried to estimate the necessary volume of accompanying garlic butter.

The room slowly emptied, leaving the Soldier and Pyro on the couch with her, trying to help her figure out how many cows and pounds of butter would be required per snail. She paused, looking at them both in the empty living room. Neither man knew a damn thing about cows or milk volume, but they were happy to guess and keep her explaining.

"I… that was useful," she said hesitantly, the conversation lulling.

"Pretty Cook," the Pyro said, "I can't deal with or understand people when they're normal, but this I can understand." He looked across her to the Soldier with a nod. "Solly, too."

"Rosie-love," the Soldier said softly, "many of us understand pain, but not all of us understand the kind of… deep pain you're experiencing. But we want to help, and we won't let you drown."

"How," she said, irritation creeping back into her voice, "exactly, are you going to stop me?" She pulled her hands in, trying to get them away from both men, but they refused.

"Like this," the Soldier said, staring at her. "Just exactly like this, Rosie-love. By refusing to let go."

The Cook pulled harder, frowning. "How is this any goddamn different than what they did," she snapped.

"Dunno," the Soldier said slowly. "Rosie-love, what did they do?"

She froze, staring up at him, her breath stuttering in her chest. His face fell and he swore, but wrapped his fingers around her wrist anyway.

"No, Rosie-love, I think you need to talk about it. I think you need to say something about it."

"Why," she growled. "Why do I need to talk about it? Why do I need to remember? Why should I talk about it with any of you?"

On the other side of her, the Pyro jiggled her hand. She turned her head to look at him. "It festers, brave Cook. It rots," he said softly. "It poisons you. And of all the men here, brave Cook, we will understand the feelings. The Spy understands the things that were done, but we understand… the poison."

He sighed heavily, eyes and mouth turning down. The additional burden of caring for someone else was going to be difficult, but he was willing to try. "We understand the poison, brave Cook, and we won't let you be poisoned by yourself."

When she started to sob, they let her hands go, the Soldier putting an arm around her and the Pyro rubbing her arm, waiting out the storm of her tears in a companionable silence.


	4. Chapter 3

The clean, slightly musky smell of the Soldier's sweat reminded her of nothing so much as sleep, of the way a body could fold into another comfortably, both nestling in the warm, yielding mass of the blankets. It reminded her of how exhausted she was, despite sleeping for a day, as if some essential part of herself had been running a race that she did not remember. The Cook buried her nose in the crook of his neck, inhaling the oddly visceral memory of an arm curled around her, the sunlight pouring the rosy light of morning over them both. The small, hard, cynical part of her reminded her that love was a stupid thing to assume, or even to feel under the circumstances, a stupid word to use to describe a situation that was temporary in its nature and so violent as to be ridiculous where it wasn't temporary. Yet, despite that hard, angry part of herself, the comfort remained, the thought of covers awaiting them both, the rumble of his voice calling her name.

She sighed, pulling her head back, eyes turned down, knowing herself to be an idiot and weak, knowing herself to be foolish for wanting, or thinking, or letting herself even hope for anything so emotional as love or even for comfort.

"Please, Rosie-love," the Soldier said quietly. "Talk to us."

"Brave Cook," the Pyro said, "tell us something."

"I don't know what to say," she murmured. "I don't know where to start."

After a pause, the Pyro spoke. "Start with the poison. The poison is what will hurt you."

"I don't know where to start with that, either," she murmured.

The Pyro made a contemplative hum for a few seconds before speaking. "I have nightmares. Do you?"

She covered her face with both hands, fingers digging into her forehead.

"Mine are about that man. He's still alive in them, or sometimes he's dead. Sometimes he's burning. The worst ones are when he's talking to me." The Pyro looked over, the cotton of his shirt crinkling as he shifted. "You know what the nice thing about taking the medications the Doc proscribes me is? It's that there's a fog between me and him. I don't take medication for the pyromania. I take it for the dreams and the heaviness. And for the hallucinations, but that's a little different."

The Soldier interrupted him with a cutting gesture that he tried to hide from the Cook. "I dream, too. I dream about my father." He paused, voice softening. "Sometimes I am my father in my dreams. Those are the worst ones, worse than dreams about things he did."

He could feel the trembling, frayed tension in her shoulders. "For you, too," he asked. "Who do you dream you are?"

Her first attempt to answer him was voiceless, her mouth shaping the words that she could not speak. She forced the words out with the second attempt. "He's sitting with me. He's sitting with me and he points out weaknesses and tells me to punish them. He eats me alive and I can't stop him."

The Soldier let his arm drift down until it was rubbing companionable circles on her back. "Which he?"

"The BLU Soldier."

The arm kept moving, circles of varying pressure up and down her back, and they waited in silence for her to speak again.

"He laughs at me," she whispered. "Because I can't stop him. He keeps coming back, sitting there, whispering, and for a moment he seems right." She cringed, waiting for either man to reject her.

The Soldier reached out, pulling her head into the crook of his neck. They sat there, the Pyro rubbing circles into the back of her hand with his thumb, the Soldier simply breathing with her head held to the crook of his neck.

"That's the worst part," he said quietly. "When you are them, or when they seem right. It's the worst because you wonder if you'll ever get away from them, if they'll keep invading you over and over, wearing you down. You wonder if they were right about you, if you've somehow absorbed a part of them that you can't get rid of. It's like being haunted."

She shivered. Every time she was around someone who needed her, she could feel the BLU Soldier standing just behind her, a presence that lacked only the animal heat of his body to become real. She felt like a hand puppet that he had slid himself into, fingers flexing.

"But you aren't him," the Pyro said.

"No," the Soldier said firmly. "You aren't. Because if you were, it wouldn't bother you. You wouldn't wake up sweaty and shaking, terrified you are him, or that you might do what he's done. Did he seem conflicted to you?"

"No," she said, distracted by the thought of being haunted. "No, he wasn't conflicted. There were two devils on his shoulders and they were competing with each other."

"Still got your angel, Rosie-love?" The Soldier's eyes searched her face, mouth softening as he saw her start to feel relieved.

"Yeah," she said, voice growing stronger. "Yeah, I think I do."

"It's going to hurt for awhile, Rosie-love, but not always this much."

She sighed, comforted, and then her memory prodded her with the RED Sniper's face, the strange, red joy of fighting and hurting. The Soldier could feel her flinch, withdrawing from them both. She straightened, pulling her hand from the Pyro's hands and curling up on herself.

"What is it, Rosie-love," he said softly. "What's in there?"

"I… sometimes it does feel good. Sometimes it doesn't bother me."

"Ah," the Soldier sighed, pulling her back into his arms. "As for that… well, some of us know too much about violence to be pacifists. We know too much about what it feels like to hurt and be hurt not to have certain needs." He paused. "And for us, we learn to ask. It's like you fucking for comfort. We just make sure we ask first and we contain ourselves. That's the difference, too. The asking and the containing." He winced. "I try to stay in the containing, but it's hard. I'm sorry about last time."

"Solly," she said, "you didn't do a damn thing I wasn't interested in you doing."

He chuckled, squeezing her shoulders. "That's the joy of compatibility. Finding someone who likes what you do so you can like what you do."

"And we do want to help, pretty Cook," the Pyro said, tugging on her hand so that she would turn to look at him. "We want to be near and to be happy."

The Cook looked at the intense, focused expression on his face, studying him as he studied her. "Why," she finally said. Underneath it, a question she refused to ask even though it plagued her: _why me_?

"Everybody gets lonely, pretty Cook," the Pyro said softly. "Everybody wants to be understood."

 _Maybe it's just their loneliness_ , she thought. _Maybe that's what we have most in common, that horrible loneliness_. The expression on the Pyro's face was wistful, even somewhat melancholy. She leaned over and kissed him for saying it, for wanting her. He kissed her back as if she were made of porcelain, cupping her face with both hands. She growled and dug her fingers into his shoulders, irritated at the implicit acknowledgement of her fragility, at the presumption that she would break, and the kiss roughened for a moment. The Pyro drew back, looking at her regretfully.

"Pretty Cook, I'm not sure that's a good idea right now."

The Soldier cleared his throat behind her. "It might be a little early for that."

She stood abruptly, angry and feeling rejected. "Are you both really going to tell me that you know what I need better than I do?"

"Well," the Soldier said, faint amusement sparkling in his eyes, "there's that and the Spy threatened to stab the first person to proposition you."

The Cook's mouth hung open for a second, then she stomped out of the room, fury burning high spots in her cheeks.

She found them both in the Sniper's beaten camper, eating a late lunch. Wrenching the faded door open hard enough for it to bang against the side of the camper, she stomped into it like a small earthquake, trailing the Soldier and the Pyro. The Sniper stiffened immediately, feeling invaded. He stood, shirtless and scrubbing at his mouth with a paper towel. The Spy turned in his seat.

"Ah, _Vipere_ ," he said, a faint smile crooking the corner of his mouth. "I was wondering when you would show up."

"What the fuck," she yelled, shaking with fury. "What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with both of you? Why the fuck couldn't you have left things alone? Why couldn't you have just let me be?"

The Sniper's face reddened, but before he could blow up, the Spy held up a hand and stood. " _Vipere_ ," he said, "let me introduce myself. I am what you might call a recruiter. I find people with particular skills and in particular positions, and I teach them a set of skills they will need to do certain tasks, including recruiting others to help them. These tasks are inevitably dangerous, and most of them don't live through the task. If they do live through the task, they tend to self-destruct after the task." He paused, a slight smile still on his face. "The very best ones come back angry."

She froze, then lunged into the space between them and tried to punch him in the face. He leaned back to let the punch fan past him and caught her fist, turning her and wrapping his arms around her.

"I am proud of you, _Vipere_ ," he said and kissed her scalp. _And I am_ , he thought, _surprised and proud of what you accomplished_.

She howled obscenities, bucking in his arms, and he staggered backward, sitting down abruptly in his plate of food with an annoyed grunt as a flailing elbow caught him in the ribs.

The Pyro winced. "I'm… I'm going to go but I'll be back. I don't deal well with this kind of thing." With that, he smiled wanly at her and gave her a little wave, then retreated.

The Soldier leaned against the countertop, his arms crossed, pleasure at seeing her understand what the Spy had done at war on his face with worry for her. _About time that French fuck had to fess up to it_ , he thought, then winced. _Hope she can handle knowing this_.

"You told her, didn't you," the Sniper asked him, growling.

"Not everything," the Soldier said with a fierce grin. "But now you're going to have to tell her."

"Tell me the fuck what," she hissed, stilling in the Spy's arms.

There was an awkward pause and she took advantage of the Spy's arms loosening to wriggle out of them, spinning to look at them both, at the displeased surprise and chagrin on the Spy's face and the irritation on the Sniper's face.

"Tell me what," she repeated, glaring at the Spy and Sniper in turn.

The Spy sighed. "We attempted to persuade you to rethink your views of violence."

Behind her, the Soldier cleared his throat. "How about," he said, voice dropping to a growl, "you tell the truth if we're going to talk about this."

"That is precisely," the Spy said, irritation making his voice rough, "what I was trying to do. It was exhausting, and very difficult to do. I did not do it lightly, and only because it was the most pleasant of the ways I know to rapidly fix certain things."

"Why don't you tell her what you physically did," the Soldier sneered, "instead of what you told yourself about it? And while you're at it, why don't you tell her where you got that technique."

"Why don't you back off, Solly," the Sniper growled, "before this turns into something nastier than her yelling at people?"

The Soldier smiled nastily at the Sniper and opened his arms. "Anytime you want to play, Snipes."

The Sniper took a step forward, visibly tensing as his shoulders squared. The Spy reached out and put a hand on the Sniper's arm, stopping him. A tremor ran down her spine, and the Spy watched her eyes widen, white around the rim of her pupils. _For a man who understands pain_ , he thought, irritated, _Solly, you do not understand when to stop pushing. Or perhaps you are jealous. Either way, you are about to hurt her worse._ Not for the first time, he wanted to slip a knife into the Soldier and twist.

The Spy took a breath. " _Vipere_ ," he said softly, "you were upset. The only thing I could think to do, to help you transition from a civilian to one of us was to help you associate being one of us with enjoyment."

"You're talking about the night you two raped me when I was high," she whispered.

The expression on the Spy's face was complicated—guilt, frustration, disgust, anger, and finally resignation. " _Vipere_ ," he said, "I would not use that term to describe it. I was most careful to do nothing we had not already done, and to try and ensure that you would enjoy what I did. There is a way of training the mind where one associates pleasure with something to help someone not feel… bad about it. I tried very hard to help you associate pleasure with us, so that you could not feel guilty about learning to defend yourself. It was apparent that you needed to learn to defend yourself, and as apparent that you felt guilty about it. I merely tried to make it easier for you."

Without a word, she turned on her heel and walked out of the trailer, the enormity of the differences between how they both viewed the situation rendering her speechless.

The Spy watched her go, shoulders slumping. If the girl did not know it, she would probably think of it: the vulnerability that made it easy to persuade her that way, the need for affection and love that made her so easy to move that way. She would think it a weakness and hate herself for it.

 _The curse of experience_ , he thought, castigating himself in as much habit as reaction to her shock, _is that you start feeling guilty about your actions before they even play out. You know their result_. He could not hate the talent and skill that allowed him to do what he'd done—it had saved his life too often—but it was at moments like this that he wished he had been someone else.

The Soldier followed her and stood in the doorway, banging the door anew against the side of the trailer. The Spy watched him followed her march to the gate for the base with his eyes, body straining toward her. Behind him, the Spy said, "You could not let it alone, could you? Tell me, _fils de pute_ , are you determined to damage her to keep her?"

Without turning, the Soldier said. "The only thing I told her was that you'd told us not to proposition her. Your boyfriend did the rest. I just wanted you to tell her the fucking truth for once, if you were going to talk about that. You owe her that much."

"And this," the Spy spat, "struck you as a good time to tell her?"

"No, not really. I just didn't want you to lie to her. Seems like she's had enough lies for awhile." The Soldier sighed. "I'm going to go chase her down."

With that, he took off after her in a ground-eating jog, the sand and rocks crunching underfoot.


	5. Chapter 4

The Cook reached the gate leading off the bases just before the Soldier stopped jogging behind her. She stood, fingers wrapped in the chain link, looking out at the dirt and gravel road. He leaned forward, arms braced against his thighs, waiting for his heart to slow and to see if she'd turn, or acknowledge him, or even say anything. Instead, she pressed her head to the fence, leaning heavily against it. She'd heard the crunch of his footsteps and the swish of his pants in a distant sort of haze, her brain full and battering itself against the great, heavy mass of the events in the previous days.

"I stood right there four months ago," she said quietly. "And you stood here. I had no idea why you were so mad at me."

The Soldier took a breath. "I wasn't mad at you," he said softly. "I wanted you to go away because we are who we are, and we're… bad enough without adding anything or anyone else. And I was a little worried about the base getting any more weird than it already is. We're not the most stable group of men, either. Silly of me to ask if you were a Commie, since there ain't even a Russia anymore, but it's comfortable, you know?"

After a moment, he realized the dry snorting coming out of her mouth was laughter. She laughed for some time, then sighed—the Soldier had made the most dramatic understatement she could imagine anyone making about the whole situation, from their stability to the strangeness of their isolated little world.

"I wish I could figure out how to reach back in time," she said. "Back to myself when I was standing in front of the gate, looking at you, all my shit in suitcases and those crates. I'd tell myself to run away no matter what the hell it meant I had to do."

She could hear the harsh intake of his breath and closed her eyes. "You know what I mean," she said softly. "The cost has been too high."

"Can't blame you, Rosie-girl," he said, unable to prevent the pain in his chest from putting an edge on his voice. "We'd miss you, though," he said softly.

The Cook turned her head, speaking over her shoulder. "I know you guys have been lonely, but now that those three are dead, you should be able to go back to town and get laid." She could see the Soldier hunch at her words, in the edge of her peripheral vision. _Surely you don't actually care_ , she thought _. All anyone has told me is that I was getting fucked. Demo's the only one who mentioned caring or wanting to care about me. If all we have in common is loneliness, this'll fix it._

With a belated jump, she realized she was testing him, that she was pushing him away. She realized she could not stop herself, that she had to know.

It took the Soldier three breaths to answer, unable to think of what to say or how to say it, the breath leaving in a gust. "Rosie," he finally said, "I … we're … we have trouble talking about how we feel."

He took another breath. "I know it hasn't been good around here, but we care. In our own ways. Hell, as much as I hate to include him, that sneaky French fuck cares at least a little. I've never heard the Spy tell anyone he was proud of them. Ever."

She turned to look at him, exhausted by her vulnerability and his. "Does it really matter how any of us feel? I'm stuck here anyway, on threat of being hunted down and killed. It's not like I could really stop you fuckers if you pushed the issue. There's more of you than me, and I'm smaller than all of you. I can't do a goddamn thing." She looked down and away, wrapping her arms around herself, despair surging through her. "He was right about that, you know. The BLU Soldier."

The Soldier made a noise, something between a groan and a sob. Pain, clear and terrible, on his face—he caged it while she watched, washing the emotions from his mouth and eyes and leaving blankness. "No," he said, voice distant. "He was wrong about everything and he died because of it. He was especially wrong about you, like you're wrong about you. You're not helpless."

"I think the way things have been over the last four months is proof enough that he was right." The Cook shifted her weight, angry and turning again from the fence, her knuckles white with strain. "I have no privacy, no one respects my goddamn wishes, I've been assaulted, kidnapped, raped, abused, beaten up, and spied on. I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future, I'm being whored out in practice, if not on purpose, by both companies, and I don't get to make any goddamn decisions for myself." Her voice echoed in the silence around them and she realized she was yelling, hands thrown wide in the air.

The Soldier took a breath, reddening, and she realized that her anger had called his own, that he was wrestling with it, muscles working under his skin—rolling and mounding, pulling and pushing. She cringed, unable to prevent herself from curling up in anticipation of a fist. He blanched, eyes wide as he stared at her, then turned on his heel abruptly and ran with a long-legged lope toward the base.

She watched him grow smaller, huddled into herself as he disappeared and she realized what it must be like for him, after his childhood, to see her flinch from him.

The RED Spy found her several hours later, in the battleground between the two bases. She sat in one of the buildings with her legs dangling over the lip of a loft. He stood under her for a moment, looking at the swing of her feet above his head as she idly kicked the air.

"I heard you," she called. "I know someone is down there."

He stepped out into the light, letting her see him. In a borrowed pair of jeans and t shirt, he looked like a different man, the white cotton of the shirt framing his tanned skin, his hands tucked into his jean pockets in a casual slouch that was unlike his normal posture. The thick waves of his hair stirred in the breeze as he waited for her to acknowledge him.

The Cook sighed, looking down at the mix of patience and regret on his face. "How am I supposed to feel about you," she said softly. "How am I supposed to feel about what you did, or about any of this? How am I supposed to …" She ran out of words and simply sat there, legs curled under the lip of the loft, fingers digging into the wood.

He shrugged, looking at the heavy bags under her eyes. " _Vipere_ , only you can know how you're supposed to feel. As for what you should do, that you will also need to determine for yourself. I came to talk to you about what I did, and about how you feel about it." The Spy looked at her with a wry smile. "It is easier, is it not, to start with something that isn't what happened at the BLU base?"

She flushed. "You're not getting out of it by distracting me."

" _Vipere_ , we are stuck together for the foreseeable future. I have no expectation that you will be distracted from it. And if I did, I would not be here, seeking you out. I do not find this an easy conversation." He looked at the ladder. "May I come up?"

She snorted loudly, eying him with contempt. "Dunno, can you keep your hands to yourself?"

" _Vipere_ ," he said, his expression oddly cat-like in its self-assurance, "I promise you I will not lay another hand on you until you beg me to." With that, he started climbing the ladder.

"Fat chance of that happening," she said nastily, going back to idly kicking the air.

He pulled himself up on the loft and sat down beside the ladder, dangling his booted feet over the edge. "Well," the Spy said, "how do you feel?"

"I feel," she spat, "like you're all assholes."

The Spy laughed, a rich sound. " _Oui_ , sometimes we are."

"And I feel like you did something evil to me."

The Spy's lips twisted into a moue of frustration and disgust. " _Vipere_ , the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. I intended to make this easier for you, but I will not disagree that what I did was not … a bad thing." He sighed, looking down at the tendons rippling in the back of his hands, and his voice grew soft. "What is done to make agents is not nice the way many people expect their lives to be. We get our hands dirty, so dirty that sometimes we cannot remember what it was to be clean."

"You couldn't have done it without fucking me?" Her hands rose, then settled with a smack in her lap, fingers wringing, legs stiff beneath them. "You couldn't have asked first?"

The Spy bit his lower lip, a gesture that made him look younger and uncertain. "I … I should have asked. I did not trust you to be able to understand what needed to occur. It is clear to me that I should have trusted you, and that you are capable of … doing what needs to be done."

After a moment, he continued. " _Vipere_ , you must understand that people often shrink from violence, that they are often confused by it and in shrinking at the wrong time, they die. I did not realize you were capable of acting, that you were capable of defending yourself."

Her head turned, staring out into the light-dappled air around them. "So now that I've killed and caused others to be killed, suddenly I'm trustworthy." She snorted. "Only in this place would that make me more trustworthy. Anywhere else, that would make me evil." She paused, her voice becoming soft. "I feel evil."

" _Vipere_ ," he said, "most people, they go through their lives and they are safe and comfortable where they are. They stay in that life, with the joys and the pains that come with it, and they do not think of danger or of how easy it is to kill or be killed. That is the life they can handle, the life they want. A few people can survive in a different kind of life, but they are few."

"I think more people experience danger and violence than you think," she said absently, thinking of the kitchens she'd managed and the people in them. "But you're probably right that few people would choose to live that way or be able to handle the stress of it without falling apart."

He shrugged, the cotton of his shirt whispering. "Very well. I saw you at a point of crisis, where it was possible for you to … take greater damage, and where I thought I could ease you over the crisis and help you come to the conclusion that would let you survive here. I used the drugs to facilitate speeding the process up."

The Cook looked at him, her expression hostile. "It wouldn't have worked if I didn't already have violent inclinations." _You may have shaped me a bit_ , she thought, _but you aren't responsible for all of me_.

The Spy cocked an eyebrow, disbelief lifting the corner of his lip in a sneer. "Did I not say few people could do this? _Vipere_ , you would be surprised at how many people lay down and die when confronted with violence, instead of defending themselves. It takes a very special kind of person to be able to fight and fight well, especially without extensive training. You took your first step without me. I merely wanted you to feel good about it instead of wasting your time feeling guilty."

"You never felt guilty?" She looked him up and down, raking him with her eyes.

"About some things, yes. About others"—he shrugged again, head tilting as he considered her—"no. I feel guilty about not asking you. I felt guilty the first time I killed and sent someone out to be killed. I feel guilty when I do a bad job, and I felt guilty about this job when first I came here. I do not feel guilty about killing the BLU. I do not feel guilty about training you."

She flinched, unseen.

He paused, looking at the wall across from them both and beyond, into himself and his motives. "I am proud of you. I am proud of the fact that you could do what you did, that you survived and that you got rid of those men. You may have guilt for it, but you should not. You should celebrate surviving. Any day you survive is worth celebrating. Even in our lives, as eternal as they are, any day you rise to walk on and the other man does not is a good day."

She sighed, looking over at the distant expression on his face, the afternoon sunlight dancing golden in the dust motes around him. "I'm still mad at you," she said softly. "And I'm confused. And I hurt. And I don't know how to feel about any of you. And I'm stuck here with all of you. And everyone seems to need something from me. And I don't know if I have enough for me, let alone anyone else."

The Spy's lips quirked up in a smile, but his eyes remained focused on the far wall. " _Vipere_ ," he said, "we are not good at speaking of how we feel. To discuss our feelings is to open the door to feelings that could drown us, and each of us carries more than enough to keep us down." He took a breath, eyes distant. "I will cheat and simply tell you that the only man neutral to you is the Heavy. Even our dear Doctor has some feelings he would rather not with regard to you. You are right to suppose the situation is complex, and right to wonder about the demands that will be made on you, but you are wrong if you believe we do not care. The Soldier, in particular, has more feelings than he would."

"Fuck." The Cook reached up, cradling her head in her hands. "I think I really upset him."

" _Oui_ ," the Spy said. "He is a passionate man and easily hurt. It is difficult for him to be close to anyone, and he has had much pain. You are, of course, not obliged to comfort him. But he would appreciate comfort, nevertheless. Many of us would."

"I'm not your nursemaid," she said drily, tensing with the instinctive fear of retaliation. "And I can't simply run around fixing you all. In case you have all forgotten, I have spent the last few days being tortured."

At that, the Spy's face grew stern, his hand rising between them to point at her. " _Vipere_ , there are times when I think I would like to spank you as I would a bad child." At her sharp inhalation of breath, he spoke more loudly, his finger prodding her in the arm. "I do not expect you to fix anyone. I expect us to help each other. You are a woman lonely, a woman who has been rejected, are you not? We are men who are lonely, men who have been rejected. We can offer you some things, you can offer us some things, and we can help each other."

Her mouth closed with a click and she eyed him warily. "I'm still not okay with you or what you did, and I'm still … dealing with what happened."

" _Oui_ , I would not suppose you were. But _Vipere_ , from what I have seen, you are a woman who is much accustomed to being alone, and it has made you afraid to take help. We cannot fix you entire, nor can we be other than what we are. But you do not have to be alone. We may annoy you, anger you, do foolish things, upset you, or hurt you, but we can also help you."

She sighed. "Don't ever do that again."

"I will not," the Spy said, tone serious. "And for what it is worth, I am sorry." He smiled, suddenly and mischievously. "Do not tell _Bête_ I apologized. I do it but rarely when we fight, and he would be jealous to know I did so for you without several hours of angry silence and yelling."

The Cook blinked, looking at the naughtiness of his expression, and her eyes narrowed. "You really are a very bad man."

"Why, _Vipere_ ," he said, grinning widely, his hand rising to his chest, "have I ever pretended other?"

"I'm not going to forgive you, you know." She could hear the wavering in her tone, the lack of conviction. The apology had deflated her anger, even as partial as it was, and for their faults and her own worries about her morality, their apparent willingness to accept her even after the events of the last few days and extended exposure to her was comforting.

"You are not obliged to do so," he said, laughter lurking in his voice and making it skip.

"You really are a bad man. You're all bad men. And I'm apparently a bad woman." She sighed and he clicked his tongue.

" _Vipere_ ," he chided, "stop that."

"You're not my father," she said, glaring at him. "You don't get to tell me what to do."

The Spy bit his lower lip, but said it anyway, unable to resist. "Why, _Vipere_ , would you like me to be? I know what the Engineer likes to do."

Her mouth hung open and he decided that climbing down the ladder would be safer than sitting within reach. By the time he'd reached the bottom of the ladder, she was yelling obscenities at him, but the tone, in his estimation, was more relieved than actually angry.

" _Vipere_ ," he called up, "if you do not stop them, they're going to set fire to your kitchen trying to make dinner."

She crawled down the ladder and he took off running, looking over his shoulder with a wild grin. She ran after him, yelling threats.


	6. Chapter 5

The Spy led her to the kitchen that way, just ahead of her and peeking back over his shoulder, the laughter on his face as provoking as anything he'd said to her. The Cook realized what he was doing halfway there, when he stuck his tongue out while his head was turned, the childishness of it at odds with his normally staid demeanor. She stumbled when she saw it, suddenly and viscerally picturing him as a boy, a fragment of himself that she had found unimaginable. He normally appeared sardonic, even archly catty. In a t shirt and jeans, running and making faces over his shoulder, he appeared younger, more vulnerable. She had expected him to stop when they reached the base, to tuck himself back into his reserved and superior façade, but he kept making faces and jogging, the click and scuffle of his boots echoing against the concrete walls.

He stopped when they both reached the kitchen, backing away from her, face flushed and laughter dancing in his eyes. She had no idea what to say to him—how to tell him that what he had been willing to let her see was touching. No doubt he knew. No doubt it was intentional. This was the Spy, after all.

The Spy reached the counter and leaned back against it, gesturing. "If you do not stop them," he panted, "they will probably set something on fire."

The Cook looked around. The Heavy and Medic both stood, watching them. The Heavy's hands had flour on them, and the Medic appeared to be butchering tomatoes, their seeds in streaks all over his white shirt and black slacks.

"What," she gasped, "do you two think you're doing?"

The Heavy's eyebrows met in the middle, an angry black slash across his brow, but his voice was mild. "We are making pizza."

She looked at the explosive pattern of flour against the wall, counter, and Heavy, then at the sodden mess of tomatoes on the counter and did not laugh, but it was a near thing. "May I help," she asked politely, breath still hitching in her chest.

The Heavy sighed. " _Mышка_ , we have taken care of ourselves for many years without you."

" _Oui_ ," the Spy said, "but surely you will let an expert help you." He looked pointedly at the mess on the countertops.

The Heavy took a sharp breath to retort, but the Medic spoke first. "If she is willing, we would appreciate the help."

"I do not want to butt in," she said, "but I'd be happy to help if I'm wanted."

The Heavy looked over at the Medic's expression, a guarded plea on it, and sighed. Wordlessly, he turned back to the dough. The man felt guilty about what he had done, even though he'd only tried to help her. If letting the girl help made him less guilty, the Heavy was willing to put up with it for a time.

"How can I help," she asked, and the Medic gestured at the wet mess on the counter in front of him with the point of his knife.

" _Kätzchen_ ," he said, exasperation making his voice rough, "is there a secret to cutting these things?"

She bit her lip, successfully refusing to laugh again, and reached for the knife—a filleting knife, she noticed, and not a sharp one. "Yes, there is. If the knife is dull, or if it is not serrated, it will squish instead of cutting. Are you making sauce or cutting toppings?"

"Sauce." The Medic looked down at the mass of seeds on his shirt and pants and made a face.

"Ah, so that means it'll be cooking down while the dough proofs? Sounds good. May I?"

The Medic gestured and she started slicing tomatoes, scooping pulp and flesh up and depositing it in a bowl.

" _Vipere_ ," the Spy said, "would you like help? I believe I owe you at least a little help."

She eyed him with wary surprise, and realized both the Medic and Heavy were looking at the Spy as if he had sprouted a second head. "Yeah," she said. "Tell me what we have for toppings, 'cause it'll effect the seasoning for the sauce."

The Cook flinched, then turned to the Medic and Heavy. "Sorry, I should have asked. Did you have anything in mind?"

The Heavy shook himself. " _Mышка_ , we had not decided." He looked at the Spy. "I do not know what game you are playing at, but play it elsewhere."

"No game," the Spy said, opening the refrigerator door. "Simply the desire to help."

"You will pardon us," the Medic said, turning to wash his hands, "if we do not believe you."

"As you wish," the Spy said, staring at the interior of the refrigerator. "We appear to have ground beef, _Vipere_ , ground pork and sausage. No pepperoni."

The Medic shook his hands dry, looking down again at the tomato on his pants and shirt. "I am going to go change clothes."

The Heavy waited for him to walk out of the room, for the dough to be done enough to tuck under a clean dish towel to rise, before turning. " _Mышка_ ," he said, "there is an understanding we must come to." He pointed a thick, flour-dusted finger at the Spy. "You will not speak of this or we will have trouble."

The Spy nodded, leaning against the refrigerator and crossing his arms.

The Heavy gestured to the Cook. "You must understand that my Doctor cares, at least somewhat, for your opinion. He spent the last night awake, angry at himself for giving you that shot, and he slept very little the days before that, worried for you. He is a good man, even if he makes mistakes, and you should be gentle with him."

Her eyes narrowed and she turned, knife still in hand. "You are the second person today to come to me, after what I have experienced, and demand that I be kind to someone else, or patient with them. Fuck you. Fuck that. Fuck all of you. I'll be kind when I can, but I am not fucking responsible for all of you."

The Heavy looked at her for a moment, the upward tilt of his blue eyes and the expression in them so feline in its irritation that she half-expected to see a lashing tail behind him.

The Spy spoke before he could respond. "If _Vipere_ makes us less stable in some ways, she is helpful in others. Our dear Doctor had his problems before she was sent here, and I am sure she does not intend to cause him any more distress than she does. She has also had a most difficult last few days, and the Doctor is more tough than you give him credit."

The Heavy's lips compressed into a tight, pale line. "She has made a mess of us. I know she does not mean to, that she did not make the BLU behave as they did, and that she is much burdened by the last few days, but where she is, chaos comes." He turned to the Cook. "You cannot leave and I will not ask, but be kind to him. He is a man much burdened by his past, and a kinder man than you know."

She glared at him. "I can only do what I can do, Heavy. It has been two days since I …" Her voice faltered, and she turned back to the tomatoes, staring through the board and into the body's memory.

The Spy growled. "Can you not comfort your lover without making it everyone else's problem?"

"I am comforting him," the Heavy said, voice edged in anger, "and I am protecting him as well."

The Medic sighed from where he stood, leaning against the doorway. " _Geliebte,_ _sie beabsichtigen freundlichkeit, aber sie sind unfreundlich_." He walked over to the Heavy and gently pulled the Heavy's stiff neck down before kissing him between the eyebrows. " _Mein Beschützer, ich bin nicht so empfindlich wie ich war, als wir uns trafen_."

The Heavy sighed, his shoulders slumping. " _Ich sorge mich um dich_."

The Medic smiled at him. " _Ich weiß_."

The Spy cleared his throat. " _Vielleicht könnten sie ein anderes mal diskutieren_. _Es ist unhöflich, jemanden auszuschließen._ "

The Medic and Heavy both turned to stare at him. " _Es schien wie eine gute Idee Deutsch zu lernen, da ich mit euch beiden zu arbeiten_ ," the Spy said, apologetically.

"I did not know you cared so much," the Medic said, eyebrows raised, a faint blush staining his cheeks.

The Spy shrugged. "I do not. The two of you have many conversations in front of us in German, and I was tired of not knowing what you were saying." The ghost of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "I hate secrets I do not know."

He turned to the Cook, still staring through the board, and sighed. " _Vipere_ ," he said softly. "Come back to us."

Her shoulders twitched, but she stayed staring through the board. The Medic, seeing that the Spy was not going to her, sighed and patted the Heavy on the hand, then crossed to her and put a hand on her shoulder. " _Kätzchen_ ," he said, drawing a breath, and she turned quickly, shrinking back into the counter and away from his hand.

"Don't," she hissed, and he drew the hand back.

"I suppose I deserve that," he said gently. "I am sorry, _Kätzchen_. I am sorry for what I did, and for simply assuming."

Tears stung her eyes. "Is everyone going to apologize," she snapped. "Can't we just make food?" A slight tremor shook her shoulders and the Medic watched it.

"Whatever you like, _Kätzchen_." He smiled faintly at her. "I am glad you came to help us. I have no doubt your pizza is quite good."

She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, sniffing, and the Medic pulled a pocket handkerchief from his pocket and presented it to her. She took it, looking down at the delicate points on the yellowed lace.

"I have always liked pretty things," he said quietly, looking at her.

The Cook gave it back, only recognizing the compliment after she'd given the handkerchief back with a faint blush. "It's too nice to get dirty. I'll just wash my hands in a minute."

The Medic accepted the handkerchief from her without comment, and turned back to his lover. The Heavy had caught the compliment and bristled. _And even yet you are jealous, my Alexi_ , he thought, with a surge of fond irritation. _Whatever shall I do with you?_ "If the dough is done, Mischa, I have a thing I would like to speak to you about."

The Heavy blinked, confused, and wiped his floured hands on his pants. "A thing?"

"A thing," the Medic said firmly, then winked. The Heavy slowly blushed, then turned abruptly and walked out of the room. The Medic, smiling fondly, followed him.

The Spy and Cook watched them go, the Spy with an arch and naughty smile. Turning back to her, he said, "I suspect they will be busy for a time, _Vipere_ , leaving us to work on the sauce."

She sniffled again and reached for a paper towel, scrubbing her face and glasses. "Their relationship is complicated, isn't it?"

"I think you will find, _Vipere_ , that most relationships are complicated. My relationship is equally complicated, and I should tend it. I will send in help for the sauce, but I left a conversation that I must finish to come to you. I will see you at dinner." The Spy turned and walked out, leaving her to wash her hands and dice an onion for the sauce.

The Cook was almost finished sautéing the onion when the Engineer walked through the door to the kitchen. He paused in the door and cleared his throat, waiting for her to turn and see him.

"What's cooking, Missy?"

A crooked, sardonic smile lifted the edge of her lips. "They send you in to deal with the crazy lady again?"

The Engineer sighed, eyebrows coming down low over his tired eyes. "Little girl," he growled, "you keep that up and papa will spank. The Spy suggested I come by, and since I've been worried sick the last few days, I was glad he suggested it." He paused. "Even if that snakey bastard is trying to manage you and using me to do it."

Crossing the room to the sink, he poured soap over his greasy hands. "I don't suppose I should touch food even after I've washed, but I can provide moral support for you and fetch things."

She turned back to the onions, salting them and stirring. "I don't know whether to be touched or annoyed that you're all so desperate to make things better."

"I recognize that emotion," he said, searching the counters for a clean towel and shaking them dry when he couldn't find one. "Not sure if you're safer alone or in company?"

"Sort of," she said, spoon stopped and dangling loosely between her fingers. She turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "I'm not okay after what happened over there at BLU, and since I've been back everyone has been either trying to fix me or trying to get me to fix them."

"And you need some space?" The Engineer leaned his elbows against the counter behind him, watching her.

"Yes, actually," she said, turning toward him. "I'm still not … I mean, there's a lot, you know?"

He debated it for a minute— _no doubt the girl is troubled by what they did_ , he thought, _but she's also new to killing_ —before deciding to talk. "I ever tell you about the first time I killed a man?"

The Cook put the spoon down, curious despite herself. "No," she said, emptying the bowl of tomatoes and their juice into the pan with the onions. He waited, and while she was adding oregano and garlic to the pot, she added. "All right, tell me."

"I'm not a merc like many of the rest of these fucks. I was actually an engineer—my old man insisted, whether I liked it or not. We may have gone shooting when I was a kid, but I didn't really get the kind of training some of these fucks did." The Engineer paused. "The first time I killed someone, it was a lab assistant at my university. I was running trials on an upgrade of my dad's mechanical legs, and one of the pieces shot off. I could have sworn it was fine. I double-checked before I turned it on, but that gear shot off it hard enough to crack the skull of one of the assistants in that lab. He wasn't supposed to walk in front of the thing, but he was overtired and crossed between me and the leg right as that sucker gave out."

He took a breath, a remembered twinge of guilt and horror stabbing him, but his voice was nearly matter-of-fact despite it. "The investigation ruled it an accidental death, so I was off the hook, but the university wanted to get rid of me pretty bad after that. My dad made them graduate me, and got the company interested in me. My wife left me during the investigation, so I was all alone, and we never had kids, so I didn't have any ties. She died a few years later, so there was no one to make up with."

She stirred silently, staring at the sauce, her shoulders hunched. The echo of pain in his voice, his willingness to talk about a woman he'd refused to speak of, the personal nature of the discussion—she didn't know what to tell him, or even if she should tell him she noticed what he was doing.

"I felt pretty bad about it for a long time. My dad actually slapped some sense into me, made me stop drinking and taking shit jobs so they'd be able to work me until I couldn't think any more. Took me a long time." The Engineer looked over at her, eyes sharpening. "You know, Missy, hard as it may be to hear, you actually did a public service by getting rid of those fucks. I know that don't fix what's wrong with you, but there's a lot of dead women out there and people who they hurt bad."

The Cook carefully placed the spoon against the pot and turned. "I didn't do it thinking about the kids, Engie. I did it because the motherfuckers were torturing me and the other people on the base. And I'm not proud of it, no matter what you fuckers say about it."

He bit his lower lip for a moment, eyeing her, then shrugged. "You don't gotta. But you don't gotta kick yourself for doing what you had to do to survive, either."

"That isn't the only thing I feel bad about." She stepped away from the stove and leaned back against the counter on her elbows, fingers laced in front of herself. "They did some bad shit while I was there, shit I'm not going to get over any time soon, no matter how much you fuckers come tell me about it."

"Sure," he said, nodding. "That stuff I can't tell you how to feel or think about. But just so you know, we still like you and we still want you. Some of these fucks know a lot of female mercs, and some of them have had hard times like you probably had. They're a pretty tough group, and there ain't no sense in shame. Nobody's so big that they can't be overpowered."

"Engie," she said, her words snapping short, "it's about a little more than getting my ass kicked."

"Just hate to see you hurting, little girl," he said, voice soothing and low. "We don't want to push you, we just keep trying to fix the problem. Dumb habit, I know. My wife used to yell at me for it, for always trying to fix shit instead of listening." He splayed his fingers on his stomach. "We don't mean to be a pest. Just trying to fix things, to make them better."

She reached up with a hand and rubbed it across her face, exhausted, covering her eyes and muffling her voice. "I'm going to need a little time, Engie. If you could pass that around, I'd appreciate it."

"Sure," he said, then added more softly. "But whenever you're feeling better, we'll be happy to have you back. Whatever way you'll have us. I know them fucks are kind of emotional, and that they're kind of pushy, but we can behave. Promise."

At that, she started laughing, her voice cracked. When he crossed the kitchen, she let him hold her, rubbing tight circles on her back as the sauce hissed and popped.


	7. Chapter 6

True to their word, the mercenaries let her decide when she would speak to them, communicating with her when spoken to or as necessary for the five days. The Soldier avoided her, turning and leaving rooms when she walked into them and sitting as far away from her as possible at the dinner table. The first few nights were simply quiet and let her try to learn again to relax into sleep, but by the fourth night, the dreams had started again, propelling her up out of bed sweating and shaking. On the fifth night, she gave up trying to fall asleep and simply waited for the base to quiet. When she could no longer hear doors opening and closing up and down the hall, she got up, clad in her pajamas, and walked to the living room, intending to watch television until she could stand to sleep.

When she opened the door, the television was already on, a dark cutout silhouetted against the tumbling images on the screen. The figure turned and spoke, shoulders sagging. "Oh, it's you. I'll go then."

She knew him by the sound of his voice. "No, it's okay Solly, I'll go."

He grunted, irritated, and stood up suddenly, the television haloing his bare chest in pale, flickering light. Without another word, he stalked toward her, remote in hand. Despite the fact that she knew he was Solly, she was struck by how much his body resembled the BLU Soldier's and bit the inside of her lip to prevent herself from flinching again. A surge of annoyance at the flinch opened her mouth.

"Stop," she said, voice harsh. "Just… stop."

He stood a step from her and sighed. In the spare light, his face looked exhausted, eyes and lips turned down. "It's fine," he said faintly. "Here's the remote, I'll just go."

She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm, as much to reassure herself which man he was as to stop him from leaving. Her dream still clung to her, making him seem unreal in the strange, tricky light of the television. His forearm flexed under her hand, but he stayed still as she squeezed it.

"Stop," she said more softly. "I hurt your feelings, I think, and I didn't mean to."

His forearm rippled under her hand again. "You've had some bad experiences. It's fine."

"No, it's not, is it? You've been avoiding me."

He looked down at her, his expression irritated again and beneath it, she thought, guardedly hopeful. "It's fine," he repeated, voice quieting as he spoke. "I don't want to make things worse. I can go and leave you alone."

"Can we just … I've been having bad dreams and I …" Her voice trailed off with her breath.

He smiled, his face echoing the worn expression on hers. "Don't want to be alone? My dreams have been pretty shitty, too."

She gently tugged him toward the couch. "Sit with me?"

He let her lead him back to the couch, sitting a few feet from her. After several tense minutes had gone by, she sighed and scooted toward him, picking up his arm and putting it around her. She could feel the muscles in the arm around her tight with tension under his skin, but he said nothing, merely let her tuck it around herself and squirm until she found a comfortable position against his side and shoulder. She didn't recognize the movie playing, and after a few minutes, realized that she didn't care. He sighed. She listened with her eyes closed to the creak of his tendons and the windy sound of his breath as his lungs inflated.

He tightened his arm, making the small adjustments necessary to cradle her to his body. When the first flow of tears, silent and painless, wetted his chest, he pulled her into his lap and sat there in the flickering half-light, holding her. She looked up and he looked down to meet her eyes, his own wet. They stared at each other, at the same the worries and frustration of the last few weeks on each other's faces. She reached up, pulling his face down, and kissed him.

Salt in their mouths, moving gently against each other, wet and slick. She broke the kiss to straddle his lap, holding his face gently in hers. He wrapped his arms around her, around her waist and back, supporting her, and returned the kiss with the same gentleness.

"I missed you," he said simply when the kiss broke. "I missed you and I wasn't sure you'd want to touch me again, or even to see me, or if you were angry and I had hurt you, or if you thought I would hurt you."

He watched her face fall and made a dry little sound like a sob, then pressed his lips to hers again, less gently, trying to distract her, to take the words back, pulling them from her mouth. After a frozen moment, she returned the kiss with a fevered desperation, seeking forgetfulness or even just relief at being close where there had been unaccustomed distance. When he reached for the hem of her shirt, she took it from him and shimmied out of it, tossing it to the side.

His skin was hot against hers, and she could feel him holding himself back, the tremor in his body sending tremors through hers.

"Stop," she said. "Please stop holding back."

The Soldier made a rumbling noise. "Please let me be gentle," he said softly, the growl hiding under his self-control. "Please. Relax."

She sighed, breath warm against his face, and went limp one muscle at a time. When she had finally managed to let herself sag against his hands, he stood and put her down on the couch, then knelt between her legs. Bracing his arms on the couch back, he framed her shoulders and leaned forward, breath caressing her as he gently touched his lips to her cheeks, to her lips and the line of her jaw, to the point of her chin as it rose and the column of her neck, lingering on the throbbing veins on either side of her neck. She shivered from the heat of his breath in the cool air of the room, and he chased that shiver, circling spots on her neck that pulled it from her again as her nerves sang. When she reached for him, he clicked his tongue with a look of mock annoyance, then froze, nervously checking her face. She smiled, small and encouraging.

He sighed, relieved, and returned to the tender skin of her neck, slowly working his way down and pulling from her small exhalations, little moans and guttural sounds, growing louder by increments and filling the room. When he reached a nipple and drew it into his mouth, she reached up, cupping his head, the wires of her nerves sparkling.

He smiled against her breast and reached up with a large hand, kneading as his lips and tongue moved, hooking and tugging the rings in her nipples. She made a musical noise, as much a note as a sigh, the beginning of a song and praise. His other hand rose, cupping both breasts to tease more of it from her with the wet pressure of his mouth and the calloused warmth of his hands.

She shifted against him, lips sliding as she moved, and he made a musical sound of his own, a bass rumbling, pleasure in her response and his ability to provoke it. With a final kiss between her breasts, he slid his hands down her sides, kissing a line down the middle of her chest and headed slowly for the loose line of her pajama pants. She moved for him, letting him pull them from her while kissing the line across her stomach where they had been, leaving her cold and naked but for the hot line of contact along their bodies. With a mischievous smile, he circled around her, kissing down the line of her legs to her knees and back up.

The Cook made a greedy little grunt, an alto noise that shaded into a growl, and he laughed against the skin of her inner thigh. He laid a frustratingly gentle kiss against the seam of her lips, mouth still twitching with the urge to smile, then curved his hands around her ass, cradling her. A second kiss and she wriggled, giving him an accusatory, indignant look. At the broad, slow lick he plied across her lips, she curled her fingers in the material of the couch, satisfaction almost comic in its intensity on her face. He licked her again, teasing her lips open and patiently coaxing her lips until they were swollen for the pleasure of watching her growing tension wrinkle the skin between her eyebrows, her hips squirming in the bowl of his hands.

Her breasts quaked up the line of her body and he watched them jiggle as she moved, eyes rolled up to see the evidence he could feel with his mouth, her face softening, pleading, the sounds pouring guttural and sincere from her. He waited until the flavor of her changed, until she cried out, the muscle fluttering under his lips, and laid a last kiss against her, sliding his hands out from under her and running them up her body. She captured and kissed them, pulling him in so she could taste herself in his mouth.

His body was pressed against hers, hard against his own pajamas. She reached for him and he captured her wrist.

"You don't have to," he said softly. "I just wanted to be close to you for a moment, to do something you'd like."

Her eyes narrowed over her smile, a wickedly teasing smirk curving her lips, and she pushed him back to his knees, waiting. She sat up and ran her hands slowly down the plane of his body until they reached the edge of his pajamas, sliding them down. He sat up, then stood, allowing her to work his boxers and pajama pants down his body, stepping out of them.

"You sure, Rosie," he asked, breath short.

In response, she leaned in, feathering her breath down him to watch his cock twitch. With a pleased chuckle, she licked him, watching his face as he looked down at her, the hunger and fear in it, the grieving and the hope, his pupils wide and darkening his eyes. His whole body was a question, the same question written on hers, born of loneliness and worry, born of the desire for companionship and years passing without it, of hope slowly dying over time. And she answered it the only way it could be answered, one moment at a time and the choice to be near, reassuring him with her hands and mouth that she wanted to be there. He said nothing, but she realized when something warm hit her head that he was crying. He took a stuttering breath.

"Fuck," he said, voice thick, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get any on you." He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand and sniffed hard, blinking.

She sat back on the couch and drew him down to his knees and then into her, gasping from the blunt pressure as he slid in. He shivered and she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him down into her arms, kissing the wetness on his cheeks until he kissed her back, body moving small and gently inside hers. She encouraged him, her hips undulating until they broke the kiss. They stared at each other, the few inches between them full of what they could not say. She broke eye contact first, head tilting up as she fell back against the couch.

He sighed and reached for her hips, pulling her down slightly to get better leverage and watching as her eyes opened to slits, cheeks flushed and mouth open, lips red and slick, the wet sound of fucking growing louder.

"I want," he gasped, "together."

"Close," she gasped.

"Yes." A tremor ran up his arms.

She reached for herself, coming quickly with her eyes locked on his, lashes fluttering with effort. He joined her at the first hard spasm with a choked moan, and they rode out the aftershocks together. They stayed silent and looking at each other, for a few minutes before she spoke.

"Do you care," she said, voice still ragged as her heart slowed.

He inhaled sharply. "Yes," he said, worry flashing across his face.

She reached up for his neck, pulling him down until he was pressed against her body. "Me, too," she said. "I was hoping it wasn't stupid to care."

He kissed her cheeks before responding. "No. Not stupid." He kissed her again, softly, as much to touch his lips to hers as to slip between them.

"Thank you," she whispered against them. "Thank you."

There was a noise like someone clearing their throat and the Soldier looked up. The Spy was standing just inside the door, a mixture of embarrassment and surprise flushing his cheeks and making him cringe. "I wondered," he said apologetically, "who was up this late."

She tilted her head back until she could see the Spy, turned upside-down by the angle. "No stabbing," she said firmly. "This was my idea."

"Perhaps," the Spy said wryly. "I told them that to give you the room to recover. If you feel recovered and this is something you volunteered for, it is fine. If not, I will be quite aggrieved."

"I volunteered," she said, pulling herself slowly off the Soldier with a wet sound. She kissed his stiff face, then sat up and turned around, leaning back against the Soldier's chest. "And I regret nothing."

The Spy let his eyes wander down her—down the flush between her breasts, pausing on the bright circles of her nipple rings, down the bright red of her lips and the languidness of her body. "You certainly look happy."

The Soldier growled but she answered first. "I am. And I would appreciate the personal time to finish what I was doing."

The Spy's lips quirked, but he refused to smile. "Pardon, then," he said smoothly, and retreated out of the door.

The Soldier sighed heavily, his head dipping to rest his forehead on the top of her head. "It would have to be him," he murmured.

She looked around. "To be fair, we are in the living room with the door unlocked."

He grunted in acknowledgement. "We could take this somewhere else and do more of it, if you like."

"Maybe? I do want to take this somewhere else, but it may involve a naked nap."

"Fine with me," he said and kissed her head.

They slipped their pajamas back on and walked hand-in-hand to her room, where they took them off again and crawled into bed, eventually sleeping.


	8. Chapter 7

The Cook woke the next morning to the sharp smell of coffee. The Soldier looked over at her as she stirred, his back against the headboard, and took a sip out of his own cup. When she rolled over, he reached down and smoothed her cheek where the line of the pillow had left a divot. Wordlessly, she smiled at him and scooted forward until she could rest her head against his hip. His breath left him slowly and he ruffled the short hairs on her head before curving his hand around her upper back and squeezing gently. She closed her eyes, her arms tightening around his waist, skin alive with sweet warmth.

After a moment, he spoke. "I made you coffee. When you have time, if you'd like, everyone wants to talk to you."

She tensed, eyes flying open, the peace of the morning shattered. "What do they want?"

The hand behind her started moving, petting. "To check on you. To see how you are. To make sure I didn't do something shitty." His voice roughened. "Apparently, the fact that you picked the crazy fucker to start with worries a few of them. That and the last time we did anything. The Medic, in particular, wants to check on you."

The Cook scrubbed her face against his hip and groaned. "I'm not … fuck. Goddamn it. I just want things to be quiet for awhile so I can glue myself back together."

"I understand," the Soldier said quietly, "but we're not alone and there's a lot of"—he paused, searching for words—"emotions in the air after the last week. The Spy is convinced I'm jealous and manipulating you somehow, so he wants to check and see whether or not you're as comfortable with last night as you said you were."

"That's rich coming from him," she said, then pushed herself away from his the Soldier's hip and accepted the cup from him, reaching for something familiar in the face of what was shaping up to be a long, emotionally exhausting day. Even slightly cold, the coffee had been made exactly like she tended to make it. She eyed the Soldier over the rim, wondering how he managed to hide how observant he was.

He saw the look and shrugged. "I pay attention if I'm interested or I have a reason to pay attention." After a pause, he spoke, his voice purring with satisfaction. "I got it right, didn't I?"

She nodded hesitantly and a smug little smile settled on his lips. The Cook rolled her eyes and the smile became a grin. Her eyes strayed from his smile to the door, her own smile fading.

"It would be nice," she said, tone acidic, "to be trusted to make decisions for myself."

The Soldier shrugged. "The problem with being crazy is that no one thinks you can think." At the startled expression on her face, he reached out then let his hand fall. "I'm not saying you're crazy, I mean that you've had a hard time and they're worried you aren't quite able to take care of yourself." Her expression darkened and he swore.

"I see," she said, voice hard, "that I'm going to be having a little chat with everyone later. It's going to wait until I've had my coffee and a shower, and until I fucking well feel like it."

After a moment, he smiled gingerly at her. "It's a bit overwhelming, sometimes, isn't it? We live on top of each other and even when we don't mean to be nosy, we're nosy."

"It's fucking annoying as shit." The Cook took a sip of her coffee and made an appreciative noise to reassure him, to distract him from worrying.

When she finished the coffee, she took a long, very hot shower. The Soldier eyed her as she walked out of the bathroom and got up, pulling the towel from her and tossing it to the side. He grabbed her wrists and dragged her back into bed with minimal, joking protest. It suited her to make everyone wait, and the Soldier had a particularly determined expression on his face that she thought worth exploring.

As it turned out, she was correct. Several hours later, they made it out of the room to find food.

In the kitchen, she started lunch for the mercenaries as a matter of habit, settling back into the routine of cooking for the group. The Soldier, still in his pajama pants and covered in small bruises from her teeth, played assistant. He hovered nearby, handing her whatever she asked for and watching her make a simple stir fry. As the smell drifted through the base, the dining room slowly filled. The Soldier helped her carry a huge bowl of rice out, followed by the stir fry on a platter.

She sat down at the head of the table deliberately, looking down it and making eye contact with the mercenaries. In the anticipatory silence, she spoke, hiding the tremors of her nervousness by clenching her hands together in her lap.

"I'm not fixed, but I'm not incapable of making decisions or taking care of myself. If you want something from me, you can ask, but take my fucking word for it when you get an answer." The Cook realized her hands were trembling, the very act of standing up for herself viscerally terrifying, even among something like friends. It enraged her, and her voice grew hard. "I'm sick of being manipulated, and no matter what I like in bed, I am not weak."

Her voice cracked on the last word and her fingers tightened in their knot on her lap. "There may be more of you than me, but I won't let you use me."

The Cook looked up at the ceiling, unable to prevent her face from twisting. Her memory fed her the dining room table at the BLU base, the helplessness of being held in the BLU Soldier's lap, his voice in her ear. _What if they don't listen_ , she thought. _What if they_ —her memory marched through the sensation of being watched as he ground himself against her, the helplessness and the horror of it.

After a moment, the Engineer spoke, his voice warm and proud. "Good for you, little girl." _Brave girl_ , he added silently, watching her entire body wince and sure she would not want him to comment on it.

" _Vipere_ ," the Spy said drily, "the high drama was not necessary, but the sentiment is easy to agree with."

The Sniper elbowed the Spy, who grunted. _Let the little bird have it, Sneak_ , he thought. "Little bird," he said, "we don't think you're weak."

She looked down, startled, her gaze sweeping the table and the mercenaries looking at her. When her eyes reached the Soldier, he winked, grinning wildly. She blushed, her eyes pleading with him, pleading that the reaction be true, and his grin faded. He took a breath, shaking his head slightly in saddened disbelief, then spoke. "We mean it, Rosie-love."

In the surprised silence, the Scout spoke. "Why not," he said with a shrug. "I like you, lady. You try hard."

The Medic leaned forward. " _Kätzchen_ ," he said quietly, "would you please come see me?"

Stunned, she nodded.

After a few minutes of conversation between the mercenaries, the Demo spoke. "Lass, when yeh can…"

The Cook blinked. "Oh, of course."

He returned to his food without comment.

After lunch, the Cook walked to the surgery. She paused outside it, hand raised to push the door open, and was swamped by memories of the BLU infirmary, the BLU Medic's scalpel sawing into the skin of her stomach and his fingers wriggling horribly in her chest. The RED Medic found her like that, eyes blinded by memory, a fine tremor in her hands betraying the terrible current running through her body.

" _Kätzchen_ ," he said softly, his own hand hovering over her shoulder before settling on it. She yelped and jumped, staring wildly at him.

" _Kätzchen_ ," he repeated, and she shook herself, panting.

After a moment, she responded, her voice unsteady. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes. Can you come into the surgery?"

She pushed past him without answering, her steps drunken and faltering with fear. The Medic sighed and followed, sitting at his desk and letting her pull up a chair.

" _Kätzchen_ , I know you are not well yet, but there are some questions I must ask. Can you tolerate them?" He left his hands flat on the desk, her eyes following them as she sat. "I will not take notes if you do not wish me to, nor will I include information you do not wish me to in my reports."

The Cook made eye contact with him then, searching his face as if memorizing it. She licked her lips, and spoke. "I don't know what I can tolerate, but I will try. And please … don't include the answers."

He nodded. " _Kätzchen_ ," he said gently, "am I right to assume they assaulted you?"

She curled her fingers around the seat of the chair and nodded.

"Am I right to assume they assaulted you more … personally?" The Medic trailed off.

She nodded, a tiny, tight movement, fingers tightening around the seat of the chair, body hunching forward.

"Am I right to assume they"—the Medic took a breath, fighting back memories of the camps, of women and girls sitting hunched and haunted, across from him—"played certain games with you?"

The skin under her eyes shivered as she nodded. The Medic looked at her, hunched into a ball in the chair, staring.

In the resulting silence, the Medic searched his memory for a way to say it, a way to delicately discuss something so personal. "Do you … their games are their sickness, _Kätzchen_. Do you know this?"

She looked at him fumbling for answers, for something to say, this man who had told her he could not do these things. "What are you trying to do," she said softly.

"To give aid," he replied, just as softly, drowning in the frustrated desire to heal, to make better, to do something, anything to fix.

They stared at each other across the divide of their respective experiences—the shared knowledge of cruelty united them, if only in a small way. She spoke first, moved by what he was willing to do to comfort her, this private man.

"It is their sickness," she said, voice tired, "and it isn't. It became my sickness when I persuaded them to kill each other, and I had my own sickness before I met them."

He stayed quiet, letting her lance the boil and giving her what he sensed she needed most—someone to listen.

"I should have left," she said quietly. "I had an opportunity to leave and I stayed." When he said nothing, she continued, voice tiny. "How do I know that staying was actually motivated by helping and not by some sickness in me?"

" _Kätzchen_ , do you refer to your masochism?" The Medic folded his hands across each other slowly, letting her follow his hands without startling her.

The Cook took a shuddering breath. "I know there's something wrong with me, something wrong with the way I approached the whole thing. I know there's something sick about me. I can never stay anywhere. Pressure builds up and I do something stupid. I just want to know if I went through all that as …" Her head sunk and she stared at the floor between her knees.

"You want to know if you were just indulging yourself," the Medic said softly. "You want to know if you should be ashamed of yourself, if there's anything you can feel good about. You want to know if there's anything you can salvage from this, or if it was all just a waste."

She froze, waiting to hear the confirmation of her fears, that she had been stupid again, that the whole thing had been some sick way of punishing herself, a selfish act.

" _Kätzchen_ ," he said. "What you did saved that team in many ways. It saved the women those three would have eventually harmed. But even though I tell you this, you look for ways to hate it, for ways to believe you should have known better, that it is selfish of you. You look for ways to believe that you and what you have done are worthless, that there could have been nothing good about you, nothing worth doing." The Medic took a breath, looking at the vulnerable line of her skull and back, a her nearly fetal curl in the chair. "Foolish? Perhaps it was. But also brave, _Kätzchen_."

He saw her flinch, then start to straighten. When she looked up at his face, he continued. "Let me tell you a story, _tapferes herz_. In the camps, there were those who, for love, gave their food to others. They knew they would die when they could no longer work. Death was close to us all the time in that place." The Medic paused, his voice growing softer. "It is foolishness, is it not?"

She stared up at him.

"Is there anything more foolish than to die for someone else?" He watched her mouth move speechlessly, her cheeks flushed.

His voice grew harsh, accusatory, an old argument with himself that he'd never been able to answer. "Is there anything more foolish than to choose to die, _Kätzchen_? Our lives are what we have, and though immortality has made us careless of them, in such a place our lives were our only coin."

Silence stretched out between them, horror and pity on her face that magnified the part of the Medic that knew the answer to be self-seeking. When she said nothing, he continued, voice faint. "I gave my food to others for a time. It was selfish, you see. My wife was dead. My children were dead. Everyone I knew was either dead, serving that monster, or scattered to the wind. I wanted to die, and perhaps to be remembered well. It was very selfish of me, you see, because I could have eaten and lived to provide medical care to more." The Medic leaned his elbows against the desk, watching her face through the veil of memory.

"It was selfish to want to be remembered well." Pain pulled his voice ragged. "Who wants to remember such a place? Who wants to have to feel obligated to remember some foolish man? What right did I have to ask? And what right did I have to deprive the people around me of the care I could provide?"

The Medic blinked rapidly against the stinging in his eyes, frustrated that once again a world removed fifty years from him would have the power to pull him back. "But it did not matter," he snarled. "The guards made me eat, and those I fed died anyway. Am I selfish, _Kätzchen_?"

She shook her head, watching the wetness gather in the corners of his eyes. He closed his eyes, face twitching. When he opened them again, he gave her a wry little smile. "Ah, but I will never stop accusing myself of it. I lived, after all, and they did not. I wanted to escape, to be a hero and better than I am, but I could not."

The Medic took a breath. "It does not matter what we accuse ourselves of, _Kätzchen_. It matters what we have done, and what effect it has. Even if you stayed thinking only of your own pleasure, and I do not think you enjoyed what they did, or even if you stayed thinking only of being a hero, what you did mattered. And what you did saved a few that you know and many you cannot know."

"Accuse yourself of what you will," he said quietly, his eyes full to the brim of horror and memory. "But what was done is done, and the result made the lives of many richer. It is what I have to tell myself sometimes, late at night. Mischa is kind enough to let me feel as if I have saved him, so that I can suppose myself to have done some good."

She reached out hesitantly and, when he didn't flinch away, held his hands. He laughed for a moment when she took them.

"And once again," he said, voice bitter, "I mean to comfort and instead talk about myself."

"It helped," she said, voice hoarse. "Thank you."

The Medic pulled his hands from hers slowly, his smile watery. "Leave me to my memory, _Kätzchen_. But do not forget that our motivations mean very much less than what we do. I kept meaning to fail but they would not let me."


	9. Chapter 8

The Cook walked out of the surgery more spry than she had been when she walked in. The pain that had made her feel so isolated was somehow lightened, or perhaps merely made smaller by witnessing the agony in the Medic's face, and by the effort to which he had gone to try and comfort her. Somehow, the fact that he knew what it was like to doubt himself so profoundly, to live with the acidic burden of wondering what could possibly be salvaged from the darkness that he had experienced, chipped away at the frozen mass of her loneliness. She had no doubt that the Heavy would comfort him, that the kind of vulnerability and openness he had offered her would not be able to devastate him.

By the time she reached the Demo's door, her walk had loosened, her shoulders back. She was still exhausted, but oddly lighter. Remembering what he had said about his door, she knocked and waited. After a moment, he answered the door and wordlessly gestured her in.

She sat on the bed, expecting him to sit next to her. Instead, he closed the door and started to pace the small boundaries of his room. Confused, she opened her mouth to ask him what bothered him. Before she could speak, the Demo did.

"Lass," he said, "can yeh really care about all of us? Can yeh want to do any of this after what yeh lived with?"

His words hit her like a slap, a million myths of what it was to be the victim of violence rising up to remind her of what she should be, to remind her she should wear her brokenness like a warning, preventing anyone from getting close to her or wanting to love her. The Cook closed her eyes, slumping again, weight of yet another failure to be what she should pressing down against her shoulders. "Of course," she murmured. _I shouldn't be surprised_ , she thought. _I'm a fucking freak, and I shouldn't be able to bounce back. I should be traumatized for life, not able to_ —the previous night flashed in her memory, the comfort of it becoming tawdry, more proof of the sickness inside her.

"Lass, are yeh all right?" The Demo crossed the small distance between himself and the bed, watching her start to curl in on herself.

She took a breath and opened her eyes, looking up into his face. "Demo," she said, voice reedy, "if you're asking why I'm back to fucking, it's because I'm a fucking freak. If you're asking if I could possibly care, I do. For whatever reason."

He flinched, then sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching for her hand. She let him take it, blinking her suddenly sandy eyes.

"I dinnae mean ta hurt yeh," he said softly. "I dinnae think yer a fucking freak."

He watched the muscles in her jaw roll as her teeth ground, but her voice was gentle when it emerged. "You don't have to say it for it to be true. I know I'm supposed to lay down and die after something like this happens. I don't know why I'm not reacting the right way."

Her eyes met his, the red lace of veins in them prominent. "Can't I just enjoy some of this?" Her voice was plaintive. "Can't you just accept me the way I am?"

The Demo reached out, folding her body into his. "Lass, that's nae what I meant. I worry. I dinnae know if yeh could, or if yeh felt pressured, or if yeh were hurting yerself, or if yeh needed us ta leave yeh be. I could nae do what yeh do."

The Cook sighed, breath hot against the side of his neck. _It's not his fault_ , she thought, scrabbling for mercy or compassion in the volcanic welter of her emotions. _He doesn't understand how I feel_. "Demo," she said, voice muffled, "I'm probably not going to react right. I know there's … something wrong with the way I think, the way I react to things. I don't know why I'm not doing this right." She rubbed her forehead back and forth against the side of his neck. "Just please let me be however I am. Please."

 _Please_ , she thought, _please don't keep talking about this_. _Please don't tell me yet again that I've failed to be what I should be_. _Not now_.

"As long as yeh are all right, lass," he murmured, turning his head to press his lips to the side of her forehead.

She leaned against him, letting him shift to support her. "As all right as I can be, Demo," she muttered. "I can't be anything else."

Guilt throbbed in her with her breath, the heavy burden of simply being wrong, of not being the right way, not reacting the right way. Anger and despair surged up beneath it—anger that he could not, would not understand, anger that he would remind her how alien it was of her not to react as she should. Despair that even here in this strange, abandoned place, she was still alien. Despair that she could not tell him, that she did not have the energy to explain to him and to be patient even for his surprise at it, let alone his emotions. She let him hold her that way for a few minutes, enjoying what she could of it and letting him see that enjoyment to reassure him as the fragile peace the Medic had given her bled out of her.

Pushing back gently, she said. "I should go."

The Demo blinked, watching her face closely for a moment. Some specter of tension, or perhaps simply exhaustion, hung in her face, thinning the skin. "Yeh dinnae have ta, lass."

"I have to make the rounds," she said as gently as she could, watching his face grow tense.

"Lass, yeh haven't been happy ta see meh, or at least yeh haven't seemed like it. Have I done something?"

The Cook paused, eyes wary. "Not precisely. I'm just fragile, and surprises are hard right now. I'm still … I have a lot on my mind."

The Demo's expression grew more worried, but he didn't say anything, merely reached up to caress her face. She forced herself not to flinch and managed a small smile at him, reaching in to kiss him.

"I'll be back when I can," she said quietly. "Please give me a little time."

He shrugged, hurt, and she sighed, her face falling for a moment.

"Please," she whispered.

"Go, lass," the Demo said, voice rough with pain and the knowledge that she would not come back.

She did, shoulders bowed under the guilt of causing him pain.

When she closed his door gently, she walked out of the base, her feet moving without conscious direction, simply moving her body and trying to get away from her thoughts, from anyone who could remind her of her failures and would ask something of her she couldn't give. Reassurance, condolences—everyone she'd talked to seemed to want her to tell them she was all right, to make her be all right, slowly gutting her until she was beyond empty. She felt as if something had cored her, leaving a shell so fragile that anything at all would shatter her irreparably.

Shade, the late day heat from rock and sand cut off—she looked up. The bowl of rock curved over her head, the slab she had fucked the Sniper on in front of her. For lack of anything else to do, she sat on it, warmth slowly leeching from her into the rock. The Cook wrapped her arms around herself, huddling and watching a beetle climb slowly across the rock face in front of her.

It grew darker and she looked up. The sun was setting, hours passing in the reverie of misery, the beetle having long since crossed the rock and disappeared. Duty called and she was overdue. Cold and stiff, she slowly stood, turning awkwardly at the crunch of footsteps.

The Sniper stood on the edge of the bowl, his hair free and moving in the wind. Motionless, not speaking nor making any attempt to communicate, he watched her with wary and feral eyes. She sighed, looking down, trying to prepare for speech, for yet another attempt to console her or be consoled, but still he said nothing.

After a moment, she looked up, wondering what he would do. Moving slowly, he crossed the sand and rock between them. When he reached her, he stood looking down, head cocked. She was struck again by how speech and the remnants of civility were so easy for him to discard—the face looking at hers held many things, none of them gentle or a precursor to speech. His nostrils flared and he walked a slow circle around her where she stood, frozen, following him with her eyes.

The Sniper could see the misery and helplessness in every line of her body, from the sluggish response to her slump as she stood, body yearning toward the ground as if she longed to be under it and have done with every last remnant of living. Balanced between ravenous hunger at the degree to which she had yielded to her pain and shock at the degree to which she had fallen in such a short time, he walked around her, trying to decide what to do. For lack of anything else, he decided to treat her as he would the Spy, if he had encountered the man in such a state.

His hand shot out, fingers digging iron hard into the back of her neck. When she struggled, he hissed at her, the sound rolling down into a growl, a sound inhuman and menacing. She put her hands down and waited. He pushed her head forward, pushing her ahead of him and back toward the base. Her steps dragged until he changed direction, toward his trailer. He could hear her sigh with relief and knew he'd made the right choice.

The Sniper could feel the change in her neck, the cords loosening as they approached the trailer, and dug his fingers in further, gouging into the bands there. She stumbled climbing the steps and his fingers left purpling splotches. When he closed the door behind them both, the Spy took a sharp breath in, hands raised. The Sniper growled again, staring a challenge at his lover, who blinked, startled, and closed his mouth. The Sniper let go of her neck and locked the door behind them all.

The Spy looked at her face, the terrible devastation in it, then back up at his lover, at the naked, bestial hunger in it that spoke of the wordless and complex needs that drove the man. He stared a question at the Sniper, less of words than caution and the worry that she would shatter entirely.

Certainty—the Sniper's face was certain and then it was hungry again. The Spy held up his hands. He'd told his lover about the promise not to touch her until she begged for it. The Sniper's eyes narrowed and he looked pointedly at one of the chairs by his small table. The Spy sat down, eyes wary, and waited.

The Sniper looked down at the woman standing there, at the dull fragility and aimless pain that had so obviously eaten her alive. _Fools_ , he thought. _Every one of them trying to make themselves feel better_. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting a small fraction of his own hunger out. _Sometimes, the best cure is to break and reform. This one is one of mine, and what she needs is to be allowed to break_.

When he opened his eyes, she shrank back from him, paling—his face was incandescent with cruelty, hunger, and the perfect certainty that he could do as he pleased. The Spy took a sharp, hissing breath in but said nothing, responding to his lover's cruelty and years of the pleasure it had brought him. The Sniper smiled at her, baring his canines, and advanced on her slowly as she backed away, herding her to the bed that she fell backward onto.

He looked down at her, waiting, letting her fill with fear and the something else he knew lurked under it—relief at being able to simply react without thought. Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a bandana. She looked at it and him. The Sniper reached out, jamming his thumb into the nerves underneath her jaw and popping her mouth open. He tied it tightly around her head, feeling her shake as he touched her, the thrill of it running heat beneath his skin. When he'd tied it painfully tight around her head, wrenching her lips apart, he pushed her down and rolled her over, watching the tremors that shook her arms and legs.

The Sniper had long since run a set of chains under the bed, the cuffs tucked under the mattress when they were not in use. He buckled her into it, stretching her resisting arms out with a grunt of effort. Wrists and ankles held loosely enough to let her move but too tight to slip, he paused, waiting for her to react. She pulled, at first gently and then throwing herself back and forth. He watched with a patience born of breaking many people down, letting her start to panic, letting her start to cry as she thrashed, letting her work herself back down to something approximating stillness, waiting for the next thing to happen.

The Sniper pulled a knife from his bedside table, turning her head with his fingers and holding it so that she could see it. Her body convulsed violently, the bed shrieking as the chains slid against the bed frame, and he pinned her head to the bed with his hand. Leaning it, he worked the blade between her back and the shirt, dull side down, and cut her shirt and bra from her. Her back was slick with sweat, face red and eyes wide and rolling, shuddering as he cut every stitch from her skillfully enough to leave no marks. He waited again through the tears, through the thrashing, letting her once again work through the panic until he could see that she had stopped thinking and simply waited for the next thing to happen with the patience of someone who knew the worst had happened and there was nothing to be done.

The Sniper sighed, the sound loud in the silence—her body still bore the fading marks of violence from a week ago. The Spy craned his neck to see, then sat back hard. The Sniper looked at the ceiling, gauging the room to swing, and pulled a short flogger from one of the drawers under the bed, hanging it over his shoulder. Once, gently, he ran his hand down her back, fingers tracing the fading bruises and wringing a small shiver from her. He looked at her face, turned toward them both. Her eyes were closed. The Sniper took a sharp breath and let the tails slither down his arm with a shrug, rustling as the flogger slid down into his hand. Her eyes popped open, wide again, and he swung the tails so she could see them. Her eyes rolled up at him, panicked, and he hissed a warning, letting the fear build up. When he gauged her heart to be thundering in her chest, he swung.

The flogger made a meaty thud as it hit her back, as much the sound of a punch as any other noise. She screamed into the gag, a choked sound, and he swung again, tailoring the blows so that the impact was deep instead of stinging. She thrashed, screaming, eyes and nose running. He kept beating her without stopping, merciless in his mercy. He did not stop when she pressed her forehead into the bed, screaming and gagging so hard her body arched up. He did not stop when she went limp.

When she ran out of tears, he stopped. Putting the flogger on the table, he pulled his shirt off and mopped the sweat from his face and torso. She laid there, brain full of static, breath deep and slow. Finger-combing his wet hair back from his face, he finished stripping in the silence. Behind him, he could hear the aroused hitch in the Spy's breath, but he stayed at the table, an audience.

She made a protesting noise when he unchained her, rolling limply onto her back, eyelids heavy. When she realized he was naked, she reached up to draw him down to her, and he hissed at her again, slapping her hands away. She blinked, waking from her stupor, and looked up at him, alarm piercing the fog in her head. He put a hot hand over her mouth and growled before untying the bandana. The Cook lay there, lips together, watching. The Sniper pointed to the floor and she crawled onto it, sitting stiffly. The Sniper sat nude on the edge of the bed, looking down at her and letting her become uncomfortable, nervous, shifting and looking around, remembering the Spy and becoming embarrassed. When the flush rose up her cheeks, he gestured her to standing. Putting his hands on her hips, he turned her around.

A tremor in her spine, sudden stiffness—it was the tension and discomfort that he knew she had for being observed that he sought. To break, she needed more than physical pain. She needed the terrible, encompassing emotional and mental pain that would overwhelm her, something she shared with the Spy. The Sniper drew her down to sitting on his lap, feeling with his hands and body the immediate panic that roared through her. He sat there with her, letting her cycle through the same panicked responses, holding her as she thrashed and letting her thrash herself out in high pitched animal noises against his obvious arousal without giving her words.

When she slumped down, again limp in resignation, he leaned her back against his torso, her feet dangling on either side of his thighs. One arm wrapped around her waist, he growled a word in her ear. "Look."

The Sniper could tell when her eyes opened again, the Spy immediately responding with a sharp intake of breath.

"Eyes open," the Sniper growled. "Always. Now ask."

She moaned, a hopeless little sound of humiliated agony, and he waited. The silence stretched out, the Spy's breath shallow and loud. After a few minutes, she spoke, voice rusty.

"Please."

"Ask," the Sniper barked.

"Please, make me stop thinking." Her voice faltered to silence again. The Spy made an involuntary sound at the sight of her stretched out against his lover's torso and the vulpine expression on the Sniper's face, the knowledge that he was breaking her down.

"Ask," the Sniper hissed.

"Hurt me," she moaned. "Please god, hurt me."

"You must ask," the Sniper whispered, "so that you know what it is you want, so that you admit to us what you want."

He reached up, cupping her breast, her pulse immediately racing under his fingers. Gently, coaxingly, he massaged the skin, feeling her start to squirm. The Spy's cheeks flushed, eyes glued to the Cook and the Sniper's hand. The Sniper slowly tightened his fingers, caging and then squeezing her breast, the pain slowly tilting her head back until she had gone limp against him. His fingers released and trailed out to her nipple, slowly tightening and then twisting to send a sharp spike of pain through her. She gasped, still limp against the Sniper's chest, eyes glued to the expression on the Spy's face.

The Spy shifted uncomfortably, repositioning himself, his face a window into the heat sending drugged fingers through his veins. The Cook's face was transparent, fascinated, embarrassment and arousal burning high spots in her cheeks, gaze passing between them like a current.

The Sniper twisted the other nipple, and she made a high-pitched moan. The Spy shivered and she shivered with him, seeing his face reflect the sight. The Sniper slid his hand slowly down her torso and cupped her lips.

"Mine," he growled, squeezing, and when she shifted he plunged two fingers into her roughly.

"Mine," he growled again, squeezing the fingers hooked inside her. Tilting his hips up to offer the Spy a better view, he slowly drew them out with a slick pop. Working them back in again, he scissored her lips apart to let the Spy see inside her. She made a grumbling noise, blushing, and he growled again, then fucked her with his fingers roughly for the wet sound it made. The Sniper's arm around her tightened, a crushing pressure that made her gasp, while his fingers slammed in and out of her.

The Spy moaned quietly, unable to tear his eyes from the sight.

When she went limp, the Sniper's arm around her waist loosened and he pulled his fingers from her. He paused for a moment, then moved his fingers down further, pushing a slick finger into her ass. She made a choked noise like a scream, squirming and pushing, clawing at his arm, and he tightened it around her. When she finally went limp, he moved it gently.

"Mine," he growled in her ear, feeling the muscles start to loosen around his finger.

The Spy whimpered.

The Sniper pulled his finger from her and fumbled open his bedside table, pulling out the lube of lube he kept there. She eyed it, stiffening again, and he hissed. He popped the cap open, squeezing a thick line of it out of the lube and scooping it up with his fingers. He held it up in front of her, letting her watch him roll it between his fingers, spreading it on them, before reaching down. With a grunt, the Sniper worked the first finger back into her. He felt her sob and stilled.

"Ask," he said gently.

"Please," she sobbed. "Erase him from me."

"Mine," the Sniper whispered, finger moving, the muscle giving around it. He worked a second finger into her, tears rolling down her cheeks, her head turned away from them both.

"Look," the Sniper growled, and her head turned to see the Spy's face, the flush on his cheeks and the way his fingers curled and dug into his palms, the pain that both sharpened and blunted the edge of his hunger. The Spy let them both see it, the mix of hunger and pain, face open. She gasped, one hand reaching out.

"Not yet," the Sniper said. "And you will beg."

She blushed, reminded, and the Sniper scissored his fingers apart, stealing her breath at the prickling, hot pain of it. A third finger joined the first two and she squirmed. He pulled his fingers from her when he could feel them moving easily and pushed her to stand. Lubing himself up, he pulled her back down, feeling her tense and whimper as he slid in. Reaching down, the Sniper picked up her thighs, holding them up and apart to expose her. He let her hang there, air cold on her lips, writhing and aware what it looked like, watching the hunger on the Spy's face become something like pain.

The first thrust made her try to sit up, memory clawing in white hot agony behind her eyes.

"Mine," the Sniper growled, squeezing his arms, and thrust up harder to wring from her a pained whimper. "Mine to do with as I will. Mine right now and no one else's."

He fucked hard until the muscle loosened enough to make a wet sound as he thrust, until her body was limp against his and he could feel her nipples pebbled against his forearm. The Sniper stopped, buried in her.

"Beg," he panted, waiting. "Beg us both."

Her breath left in a rush and she whimpered again.

"Beg," the Sniper said. "Or hang here, unfulfilled."

The Cook's head came off his shoulder, turning, and he stared at her impassively. After a moment, she turned to look at the Spy.

"Please," she whispered.

"Not good enough," the Sniper growled. "Like you mean it."

"Please," she moaned, staring at the Spy. Working an arm loose, she reached for him, fear and lust flushing her face. "Please," she said, reaching.

The Spy stood up and walked to her, clothed, looking down at her. When she reached for him, he pushed her hand away.

"What do you want from me," he said, voice thick.

"Fuck me," she said.

"Do not bother to be gentle," the Sniper told him, voice rumbling in his chest. "Hurt her."

The Spy shivered, eyes closed, and stripped quickly. Scooting forward, the Sniper opened his legs further and scooted his hips forward, letting the Spy kneel between his legs. Tilting them both back slightly, the Sniper could feel her body react as the Spy slid into her, squeezing her between them, the pressure from his cock flattening the thin layer of skin between her cunt and ass. The Sniper sat up, letting the Spy help him keep her legs up between them.

She squirmed, gasping at the immense pressure, the fullness that stole even thought from her. The Spy took her thighs from the Sniper, who reached around her to grip the Spy's sides.

"Mine," the Sniper growled. "You be still."

The Spy knelt there obediently, cock buried in the Cook, and let the Sniper bounce her up and down on them both, sound pouring hoarsely from her mouth with the wet smack of the Sniper's hips against her. Leaning forward, the Spy bit her neck to feel the vibration of her vocal cords in his mouth, her voice becoming choked. He could feel the Sniper moving, pressure caressing him inside the Cook, whose eyes were rolled up in her head.

Pain, pleasure, the sensation of being stretched, her head limp on the Sniper's shoulder, the Cook had stopped thinking, the endless cycle of her thoughts gone under the sensation of hanging between them, unable to escape, or move, or do anything but feel a pleasure that knifed up her spine like a killing blow, screaming, muscles rippling, eyelids fluttering.

The Sniper came with a shout, heat splashing inside her as he spasmed, and the Spy came soon after, both staying inside her, moving until she came so hard she stopped breathing, half-fainting.

"Mine," the Sniper growled again in her ear, and rolled them both back slightly to let the Spy pull himself out. Still moving gently in her ass, he rocked her as she squirmed, pained and oversensitive.

The Spy sat down beside them both on the bed, panting.

"Mine to fuck. Mine to come in. Mine to hurt," the Sniper said breathlessly. "Tell me."

She moaned and he let her legs down, wrapping his arms around her, still moving.

"Tell me," the Sniper thundered.

"Yours," she said.

"Mine to what?"

She whimpered. "Yours to fuck. Yours to come in. Yours to hurt."

"Not his," the Sniper growled. "Never his."

The Cook cried, slumping forward, and the Sniper kept moving. "Never his," he panted. "Nothing he did. Nothing he said. Nothing he could ever do. Always mine."

"Yours," she whispered, hanging there.

"Mine," the Sniper agreed. "And the Spy's."

"Yours and the Spy's," she repeated.

"Once more," the Sniper said. "For my pleasure, not yours, because you are mine."

She shivered, bent at the waist so that her forehead nearly touched the floor, and he watched himself disappear and reappear, her skin stretched tight and slick around him. After a moment, the Spy stood and dragged a chair forward, sitting in it and putting her head on his lap. Reaching for her arms, he held them and watched his lover over the curve of her spine, the Sniper's fingers digging into her sides.

The Sniper came with a shudder and an expression that was as much pain as pleasure, then sat there panting, utterly spent. The Spy helped her pull herself off the Sniper and stand, then pulled her to sit across his lap, cradled with her legs dangling from the side of the chair.

The Cook sighed, utterly emptied. Her body hurt with the deep, satisfying ache of being well-used, brain slowed and unable to think enough to muster emotion or even reaction. The Spy kissed her scalp and forehead as her head came back.

"I don't care," the Sniper said, voice guttural, "who else you fuck or what else you do. I don't care what anyone else thinks. I don't care if you fuck every other person on the base. You are mine, and the next time someone tries anything like that, I will kill them if you don't get to them first. You will not feel bad about this. You will not feel bad about what he did. You will not feel bad about killing him or I will beat you until you stop. I will hunt you down on occasion, on my time, and fuck you as it pleases me." He laughed, shortly. "It pleases you, doesn't it?"

The Cook made a sleepy noise of assent.

"I will fuck every last trace of him from you because this is what you need," the Sniper said, wiping his forehead on his upper arm. "I know you need other things, but those fuckers make a mistake with you that I won't make—you need not to think, and someone who won't put up with some of the shit you do to yourself. You need to not have to have to comfort one of those emotional fucks for awhile, and you're probably the type that would feel obliged to do so."

The Sniper reached over, turning her head to look at him. "I know you're going to panic tomorrow. I know this is going to make you very uncomfortable when you have time to think about it. But know this: you can have shelter here from all the shit that burdens you. And you asked for every last little bit of this."

He sighed and pulled himself to standing. "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go back into the base just like we are, because some of those fuckers need to see this, and we're going to pull the mattresses from our beds because I'm going to sleep with both of you." The Sniper pointed at the Spy. "And I'm going to fuck you until you howl so she can see that side of you, too."

"You're giving her the ride in," he said to the Spy. "After all that, my back needs a break."

The Spy and Sniper pulled on shoes, and the Cook stood on the chair, wrapping her arms and legs around the Spy, her head resting against the back of his neck. They walked back to the base that way, naked and stinking of sex.


	10. Chapter 9

The Sniper tapped the Cook's shoes against his thigh as he walked, jiggling tube of lube he'd tucked into them while he contemplated what the hell to do with the woman. His travels had taken him all over the world, sometimes staying for a few days in a city, sometimes for months or years, forced to blend into the local population until he could finish his job. Like many people in his profession, he usually managed his needs with professionals or through picking someone up at a club. Unlike many people in his profession, his needs were more violent and much more specific than a simple choke and fuck or a little light beating. He'd learned to control himself and avoid arrest, barely scratching the surface of his desires and doing just enough to push back their compulsive effect on his life. Once he had learned of their existence, he'd immersed himself in leather communities, looking for the kind of submissive who needed what he needed to give them.

The Sniper sighed, fingers tightening on her shoes. He hadn't intended to fuck her, just find her. But that expression, the mix of killer and puppet, backbone and fluidity in her, the heady mix of despair and rage on her face—he wanted to eat her alive, to own and to invade her in something that threatened his meticulous self-control. _Professionals_ , he reminded himself, irritated, _have standards, not feelings. They do not offer to kill anyone that touches whatever the hell she is like an enraged boyfriend_.

He wanted to punish her for the nasty surprise he'd just experienced, for the mix of weakness and exhaustion he could sense in her, and because it was a joy to punish her. The Sniper snorted, disgusted with himself. He usually avoided people like her for anything more complicated than a night or two. Submissive men and women he'd encountered with that particular cocktail of poor personal boundaries were both a delight and a headache—they went so willingly to places that few could go, but they were an emotional wreck that he was only too happy to get rid of immediately afterward. They were also dangerous, their lack of boundaries making it all the more difficult for him not to do something he'd be arrested for, their compulsions calling his own. The only person he had ever managed to deal with long term was currently carrying the woman. _Of course_ , he thought, _Sneak isn't so goddamn needy._

People like her needed someone to be their willpower on occasion, to say no and hurt them so they wouldn't hurt themselves. He'd seen it before, in leather communities, dominants taking on a submissive who was unable to say no in bed, or whose life was a mess of bad decisions. _What she really needs_ , the Sniper thought darkly, _is to be stripped down to the animal she is to remind her to stop taking the wrong things so fucking seriously_. He grimaced. _When did I start taking in strays?_

The Sniper held the base doors open for the Spy, who grunted and shifted her up further on his back before walking into the base. As they passed through the base to her room, the Scout walked out of the dining room. With a choked laugh, he held his hands up and said nothing, walking back to his room and shaking his head with amused disbelief. _Those fucks only get stranger the longer this goes_ , he thought.

The Medic stopped dead on his way out of the surgery. His eyebrows meeting, he held a hand up, then stopped under the Sniper's glare. After a second, he spoke meekly. "Did you want to borrow the medigun?"

"No," the Sniper said shortly, his expression daring the Medic to keep talking.

The Medic looked at the small procession. The Cook's face was pressed to the Spy's back, hiding it from the world as if she were clinging to a favorite doll or blanket for comfort. Her back was a mass of purple, black, and blue, the fragile curve of it painted from just under the shoulders to the back of the thighs where they disappeared from view in the Spy's arms. _She has more in common with Mischa than I knew_ , the Medic thought, _if this is a comfort for her after what they did at the BLU base_. He looked at the nude, lanky form of the Sniper. _And you have more in common with me than I thought_. _I didn't know it was possible for you to care, wild thing that you are_. His gaze wandered approvingly over the tightly corded muscle of the Spy's body before snapping back to the increasingly irritated gaze of the Sniper. "You know where to find me," the Medic said simply, and walked around them on his way to the kitchen.

The Sniper kept walking, the Spy following him. In her room, he put her shoes on the nightstand. Walking to the Spy's room, he manhandled his mattress out of the door and did the same in his own dusty, neglected bedroom. When he shut her door behind him, the Spy and Cook were sitting on the bed, talking to one another. They stood when he came in.

"I think," the Spy said quietly, noticing the rage on his lover's face and the tension in his body, "this may be handled with conversation if you are tired."

The Sniper looked down at him, eyes hooded by shadow under his brows, then shrugged. He lined the mattresses up on the floor to make a large, flat pad, then laid down on his side, head propped up on his arm. The Spy and Cook sat back down on her bed.

"What," the Spy said to the Cook, "is the sickness to which you refer?"

She snorted, an arm flying out. "This. Look at me. Look at my back."

The Sniper watched what she said and what she did not say, the slightly manic undertone to her voice and the guarded pleading in her expression, eyebrows coming up in the middle, the way she cupped her torso protectively and the restless tic of her eyes across the Spy's face— _acceptance_ , he thought. _Sneak's going to have to do this one_.

He looked over at his lover, at the combination of amusement and sympathy on his face. He knew the Spy was proud of her, proud of what she'd accomplished in the few months they'd had to teach her. The Sniper touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth, a distraction from the sardonic laugh he could feel bubbling up in his gut— _a killer and still naïve_ , he thought.

The Spy reached for the Cook's hand. " _Petite_ ," he said gently, "there are those who do not fit in well to the stories people tell each other about the way we should treat each other. For some, it is not the roses which touch their hearts, it is the thorns. They are not moved by kindness, but by cruelty."

She looked at him, frustrated disbelief and stubbornness naked on her face.

The Spy continued, his thumb rubbing slow circles on the top of her hand. "For some, it is not so easy to speak of their pain, nor is it easy for them to express what they need. The things which others like do not comfort them, and they have nowhere to go."

He paused, looking up at her face through the lace of his eyelashes. "Tell me something, _Petite_. How many relationships of the kind that you need have you had?"

The Cook's shoulders slumped and she muttered something. The Spy waited, thumb still moving. Finally, she spoke again, harsh with effort. "None. I appear to frighten even people at the leather clubs."

"I thought not," the Spy said. "And have you done things that perhaps you should not because you were frustrated?"

She did not respond, face turning away from them both.

The Spy took a breath, his lips twisting into a wry smile. "Perhaps the hardest part of being what you are, as I understand it, is that you crave what others call degrading. If they do not crave it, they cannot understand how anyone else might. If they do not need it, they cannot understand how anyone else might." He paused, thinking back on some of the people he had known, conversations late at night after a bottle of wine. "You compare yourself to others. How can you not, when they compare themselves to you?"

The Sniper made an irritated grumble and the Spy glanced sharply at him before continuing. "And because what you crave they find disgusting, you believe you are disgusting. So the pressure builds and must be expressed but you cannot let it. Then it explodes into action, and you feel as if they were right."

The Cook frowned. "You make it sound so simple."

"It is not," the Spy said. "But you cannot make your needs go away. They must be expressed or you will make of yourself a danger, and make yourself a danger to others. They fear involvement, fear causing you harm or being harmed as you explode. And so, you come to a crisis. Perhaps, _Petite_ , you should stop punishing yourself for what you cannot help so that you can better express your needs."

He looked over at the long figure of the Sniper as she mulled over what he had said—the man was slow to express anything resembling possessiveness, preferring to keep emotions of that sort to himself. He had first known of the Sniper's feelings for him, despite the ostensibly casual nature of their relationship, when the man had started to divide his attention on the field between team objectives and guarding the Spy's back from the scope of his rifle. The offer to kill did not surprise him. The Sniper offered the skills he had, and his skill behind a scope was formidable. What had surprised him was the protective and personal nature of what the Sniper had said to her. Whether the Sniper had merely told the woman that to help bolster her sense of self-control or meant it remained to be seen. The violence on the Sniper's face, however, made it clear that he had not intended to offer and was reconsidering it.

 _Bête_ , the Spy thought, _you do not have the constitution for the kind of support she needs, but for you to have offered speaks loudly of how you feel_. Jealousy crept with sharp little fingers across his back, then the Spy shrugged mentally. _If he has formed some sort of attachment, we are all stuck here together and can adjust. I will not lose him_.

The Cook spoke, watching the Spy warily. "How would I do it?"

"How does anyone change their mind," the Spy said, eyes refocusing on the Cook's face. "One refuses to entertain thoughts one should not, employing whatever methods are necessary to do so. You can certainly distract yourself by entertaining all of us. It would also not hurt for you to understand that you are one of us, for better and worse."

She flinched, pulling her knees to her chest. "I'm a killer," she said dully. "I have died and come back to life. I'm trapped on a set of isolated desert bases with a bunch of other killers who I am fucking." She sat quietly for a moment. "And apparently, most of you are kinky motherfuckers, too. I'm not sure how I feel about all this."

The Spy leaned back against the headboard, the bed creaking, and shrugged. "You may feel anything, _Petite_ , though it would be a waste of time to bemoan it, since it cannot be changed. The best of all the things I may teach you is to be practical—you may choose, of course, to be miserable about these things, or you may enjoy what you can of them. As with your desires, the things you can learn to accommodate may be managed. Otherwise, they explode."

The ghost of a smile flitted across his face. "And if it is the number of us, _Petite_ , I assure you that this is not so uncommon. People are often quite interested in fucking and quite dishonest about the count of their partners. What is uncommon is that we all know about each other."

Stung, the Cook snapped. "I am not a slut." Years of scolding, punishments, and painful gossip, lessons learned and church and home needled her, reminding her that no one could possibly respect her knowing what she was doing with the men on both bases.

The Spy's eyebrows shot up. " _Petite_ , for _la Mere_ , I have fucked an entire barracks to distract them from a theft a colleague was performing. I have blown strangers, seduced the old and young, and once spent several months posing as a pimp. Perhaps, if you are a slut, you are in good company." He sat up. "Although, if I am honest, I am offended on your behalf."

The Spy leaned forward, one long finger extended to poke her in the chest. "It is offensive what you say about yourself," he said, his finger jabbing into her chest, "and if you will not be offended at the things you say about yourself, I will be offended for you." His eyebrows drew together over his pale eyes and an edge entered his voice. "I am quite sick of hearing it and I believe I will start to become quite forcible on encountering it."

The Cook looked at the irritation and dislike on his face, surprised. "Do I say it often," she asked softly.

" _Oui_ ," he replied tersely. "You have done what few of my operatives could do, have survived it to come back in one piece, have taken to this life like a duck to water when you were not whining about what a bad person you are. You should be celebrating your survival, _tromper_ , and while I understand that what was done to you was painful, I am unwilling to sympathize with this part of you that clings to the thought that you are bad and everything you want and do is bad."

The Sniper cleared his throat and they turned to watch him. "You can't expect us to humor your self-hate forever, Birdie." _You really are an artist, Sneak_ , he thought, reminded yet again of why he had come to respect the man.

They watched her face—embarrassed rage became hurt, which became worry, and then became fear. The Spy slid off the bed as she debated with herself, sitting cross legged near the Sniper, who reached out to squeeze his thigh. The Spy covered the Sniper's hand with his own, and the Sniper turned it up to hold his hand. The Spy blinked, looking down at the hand and over at the Sniper, whose wary eyes asked a question. The Spy squeezed his hand.

 _Bête_ , he thought, stunned, _the longer she is here, the more a lover you become_. _What has changed in you that you do not hide it?_

Seeing the Spy's surprise, the Sniper laid back, leaving his hand in the Spy's. "Sneak," he said quietly, "I …" _Maybe_ , he thought, _I've just pretended to care for so long that I actually do_. _Maybe I'm just tired of lying about this. Maybe it's because you're the first person I've ever been able to stand for this long_. "Sneak, I…"

The Spy put a finger on the Sniper's lips. As the Sniper watched, the smile on the Spy's face grew slowly radiant, softening the hard lines of his mouth and jaw. " _Je savais quand tu avez commence à garder mon dos._ "

The Sniper frowned, working out the translation, then haltingly replied. " _Fille rappelle moi. Beaucoup de temps je apprecie tu compagnié. Je savais pas temps passé_."

"Stop, stop!" The Spy laughed loudly, head thrown back and startling both the Cook and the Sniper. "Stop murdering my poor language, _Bête_." As his giggles died down, the Spy reached out with his free hand, cupping the Sniper's face. " _Je t'aime_ ," he murmured, lips still quirking. " _Tu avez possédé mon coeur depuis le premier coup de feu._ "

"Entanglements," the Sniper murmured into the Spy's palm. "This job really has ruined me for contract work."

"Or perhaps," the Spy said wryly, his thumb tracing the Sniper's lower lip, "it has made you a part of a team. Teams can be quite effective, I hear."

They looked at each other for a moment before the bed creaked, the Cook shifting. When they both looked over, she ducked slightly in embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she said, "I needed to move."

The Spy sighed, pulling his hand from the Sniper's face with a final caress. What they had started, they would finish later, in private. He turned toward the Cook on the bed. "I meant what I said, _Vipere_. I am willing to entertain your hurt at what was done to you. I will not entertain your self-hate. I doubt very much you are quite done with it, but I am willing to become forceful if I am forced to see you kick yourself."

"It is not entirely me," she murmured, watching their intimacy with hunger and regret at the depth and apparent ease of it. "I did not come up with these ideas on my own and they aren't so easy to get rid of."

" _Oui_ ," the Spy said. "I know. But here, we are not … we do not work as the rest of the world does. I have no doubt that we have the problems any group of men may have, and that we will be fools toward you. I have no doubt we will be offensive on occasion, and that you will wish to slap us all. I do not doubt that you have learned such lessons about yourself from the world and that they have been most persuasive, but _Vipere_ , you may take advantage of such differences as we offer you. And perhaps you will gain something from it."

The Cook looked down at him from her bed, resting the point of her chin on the knees she'd curled into her chest. "Let's just say that this many years of bad shit is not going to be defeated by a pep talk and good sex." She smiled wryly. "But I will try to take advantage of what I can, and to be more aware of how I speak about myself. I think you are probably right that I am cruel to myself."

" _Vipere_ ," the Spy said, stretching out beside the Sniper, "it is all anyone may ask. And now, do you wish to speak of your time at the BLU base? That, I will listen to. If you wish"—he opened his arms—"I will hold you for it."

The Cook looked down at them both, the Spy's body cradled snugly into the Sniper behind him and took a breath, then sank down on to the mattress beside them.


	11. Chapter 10

The Cook lay facing the Spy and the Sniper behind him, loosely held in the circle of the Spy's arms. The temperature of the desert had fallen with the sun, the room rapidly chilling. Reaching over to the bed, she pulled her blankets down and covered the three of them, returning to the loose circle of the Spy's arms. The silence stretched between them as she tried to figure out how to sum up her time at the BLU base and what to say about what had happened to her there. She had no idea how to even make sense of some of it, how to detangle what was her fault from what had been done to her or even how to feel about the chaotic mass of emotion she experienced every time she tried to think about it. Anything she had to say could not convey the horror and the kind of damage that she had experienced, and she had no desire to recall everything in detail. _My dreams_ , she thought in wry frustration, _do that for me_. After a few minutes, she decided on something to say and spoke, quietly.

"It isn't the violence, really. That was bad enough. It isn't the rape or the torture, though I'm going to remember being"—she shivered—"vivisected for the rest of my life."

The Spy managed to suppress his surprised disgust quickly enough to prevent her from seeing it. He knew she'd feel obligated to respond, to explain herself or just to notice, and that it would prevent her from talking about what had happened, her surprisingly overactive sense of being responsible for others and guilt preventing her from getting any help.

"It isn't even the dreams, though they're bad. It was"—she paused, eyes unfocusing to stare sightlessly through the Spy's face—"the BLU Soldier kept trying to break me down. And he came so close." She looked up, exposing the fragile line of her neck. Her voice tried for conversational, but only managed to be tense.

"You'd think that violence is bad enough to keep your guard up, but after awhile you start wanting to please, anything you have to do to try and avoid any more pain. It's like they creep inside your head, and even though you know they're evil, you just go along with things. You start thinking about everything you do and wondering if they'll like it, because maybe if they like it, they'll stop hurting you. I started to wonder if he would like my food."

Her chin tilted down, eyes focusing on the Spy's face. There was an inchoate wound in her eyes, bleeding, and her voice was a bewildered whisper. "Why would I wonder if he would like my food? Why was he able to make me…" She shivered, unable to finish the sentence, unable to say that he had managed to make her come, her mouth chewing the air soundlessly.

The Spy sighed, several things he had observed since she'd come back suddenly making sense— _that's why_ , he thought, pity and reflexive rage roiling in his thoughts. _No wonder you're so touchy. You loathe yourself_.

"I knew their Spy was something of an expert in interrogation and their Soldier was"—the Spy's mouth twisted into a moue of disgust—"an expert of sorts in mind games." He paused, considering what she might think she knew about the kind of bonds formed between a kidnapper and their victim. The Sniper shifted uncomfortably behind him, tense. The Spy knew his lover was thinking about the woman and the situation on both bases, and if he were to guess, the man was having some uncomfortable self-reflection.

" _Petite_ ," the Spy finally said, unconsciously lecturing them both, "your people call it Stockholm syndrome, though they are fools to say it mimics love. It would be more accurate to say that it becomes in your interest to try to please, and that you lie to yourself because it makes what your captor is doing to you easier to bear."

He looked at the horrified expression on the Cook's face. "He forced a response, did he not? An intimate response?"

The Cook winced, her body curling on itself. The Spy swore for some time in French, the Sniper laying behind him muttering something in a vicious undertone. When the Spy had calmed enough to speak again, he reached forward, uncurling her so that he could pull her face up and make eye contact.

" _Vipere_ , the body is a machine. If you push its levers in the correct sequence, under the right conditions, you can get the response you like. He pushed levers in the right sequence and got a response. Nothing more, nothing less. You would not blame a machine for functioning as it should." His fingers dug into the sides of her head. "He pressed your levers, all the levers he could find in your body and your head, to get a response and to hurt you. This means nothing about your body and you, and everything about him."

She shuddered violently. The Spy watched the desire to believe him rise on her face, and watched it quickly disappear. _Habit_ , he thought, disgust returning to him more quickly with anger. _She is so in the habit of disbelieving good things about herself that she cannot let herself believe anything but that it is all her fault_.

The Spy continued, his voice growing forceful. "He also knew enough to find the levers, and while I tried to prepare you in some fashion for what could happen, you were not prepared for the … expertise he could use to press levers. Even I would have been hard pressed to resist, and I am very well trained in resisting. Everyone, no matter who they are, will break eventually."

Her white-rimmed eyes flicked, rolling away from him. The Spy hissed at her, shaking her to force her to focus on him. " _Vipere_ , to whatever degree you went along, it was not willingly, it was to survive. The things we do to survive cannot be judged like the things we do when our time is our own."

Her eyes closed and the Spy took a sharp breath in, frustrated with a mix of his own memories and compassion. "You cannot blame yourself for what he did. You cannot blame yourself for doing what you had to. You cannot think that what he did means anything about you."

The Spy's words flowed over her like water, like a dense current pushing at her as memory pressed her down. Her voice emerged from her mouth slowly, slurring and deep. "The things he said were everything I fear. Weakness. Cannot defend myself. Fragile. Dumb body and its tricks. Born to be a whore. Can't even die to escape. He recorded what he did so he could show it to you, so you would have to see me like he did."

Both men froze, looking at her. "If he was not dead," the Spy said, his voice icy, "he would have to become so in a creative fashion." _For whatever else I am_ —his thoughts were crystalline— _even I know why women who are masochists fear what it could justify doing to them_. Treacherously, the part of himself that constantly took notes on the people around him made note of even that, of the kind of native skill or perhaps luck it took to manipulate her that effectively. _If it was skill, he was a very skilled amateur_. Sneaking admiration turned to disgust— _if he had known what kind of long term damage he could do his toys, like a professional, he would have known better than to evoke those kinds of demons_.

The Spy blinked, self-conscious. _Or perhaps he would have done it anyway_ , he thought, chilled. _At least there are things I would not do unless I must_.

The Sniper said nothing, trapped between fury and the discomforting realization that he had more in common with the BLU Soldier than he cared to—the humiliation of what she had said was enough to cause a reaction in him, blood pooling hot and heavy in his cock where it lay against the curve of the Spy's ass. The Spy shifted and turned his head to send a warning glare over his shoulder and the Sniper took a breath, forcing himself to think of something else, not to respond to what the BLU Soldier had done to humiliate her.

"For what he did," the Sniper said, when he had regained some control of himself, "I would help."

"He really was trying to damage," the Spy said, disbelief tingeing his voice. "As much as he could, as quickly as he could." Some of the fracture lines in her had been obvious shortly after meeting her, the long-honed instincts of a predator and a vast array of experience serving to alert him to a number of potential sites for leverage, but the Spy had done nothing with the knowledge, preferring to simply keep it handy the way he kept everyone's weaknesses handy: a habit born of long years as an agent and the exigencies of snap decisions he'd had to make in the field. To have waded into those fractures, flailing about—the Spy had only really hated one man on the BLU team before this, but the kind of indelicate smashing the BLU Soldier had done was despicable and despicably sloppy.

"He said that he was looking forward to re-breaking me over and over." The Cook's voice was faint, still slurring and deep with distance. "That they would watch and whenever it looked like I was okay again, he'd come get me."

The Spy looked at the unfocused distance on her face and sighed. The situation and problems she was experiencing were considerably more complex than he thought, and would require more time and a great deal more effort than he could provide by himself. " _Bête_ ," he said, "for this we will need some help."

The Sniper made a contemplative hum, glad of something else to think about. "What were you thinking, Sneak?"

"I am thinking," the Spy said quietly, his gaze slipping past the Cook as his eyebrows knit, "that this will have to be something of a group effort. Most of us are not prepared for the sort of work this requires, so I will have to have a talk with several of them."

"I'm not," she said quietly, "totally frail." The Cook pulled back slightly in the Spy's arms and he let her so that he could better see her face and the offense forming in it despite the exhausted pain that dominated her expression.

" _Vipere_ , if you were anything but incredibly strong, you would have died on the inside by now," the Spy said sharply, glaring. "There are few aids for this sort of thing. The most potent are restoring your feeling of safety and control. For you, this is complicated because you feel safest when you are not in control."

The Spy fell silent, turning possibilities over in his head and mulling them. The most obvious, assuring that even the vanilla team members understood the psychology of masochism, was not possible. He could explain, in considerable detail, but they were unlikely to really understand and very likely to cause more problems by asking her to do have whatever they considered to be the right response.

The second, giving her an environment she could totally control, was impossible. Any day now, the BLU team could be reassembled and they'd be back to war. While the team members responsible for kidnapping her were dead, it did rule out another attempt. It also did not rule out her being asked to spend time on the BLU base by the companies. He was also unsure how she would negotiate her need for a loss of control alongside the need to utterly control her environment, and could foresee an increase in her stress based on trying to negotiate it that he could not alleviate for her.

The third, preventing her from seeing the non-vanilla team members so that they could not make demands on her that she could not answer, would also be impossible. Trust was the bond which allowed a masochist to feel safe with a sadist, and to some degree that, also, was not entirely possible.

The fourth was simply to step up training her to be her own predator, honing the aggressive and offensive instincts that he could see in her until she could better defend herself.

 _The question_ , he thought, eyes narrowing as he watched her face, _was the degree to which making her a predator would conflict with her urges or cause her to feel worse about taking care of them_. _This is not an exact science, it is more of an explosion in a chemistry lab_.

" _Vipere_ ," the Spy said slowly, "I have to ask a few questions which may be painful."

The Cook sighed, looking down again, her lower lip in her teeth.

"For this," the Spy said, looking over his shoulder, "it might be best if you held her with me. The questions probe uncomfortable topics, and the body sometimes needs a reminder when the mind is occupied."

The Sniper grumbled, then sat up and crawled over them, sandwiching the Cook between them both. _Sneak_ , he thought, _this had better have a good result soon. I am at the end of my patience with this shit_.

The Cook shifted away from the Sniper's cock, still partially hard. He growled but let her maintain an inch of space between them.

" _Vipere_ , have you ever had any urges that were, perhaps, a little more forceful than involving forces acted upon you?" The Spy watched her head come up, confusion wrinkling her face. After a moment, she nodded slightly, scanning his face.

"How did you persuade those two"—he paused, hating to give them credit for even this much—"men to kill each other?"

The Cook's skin crawled: hate, disgust with herself, the desire to vomit. She felt like a thin shell over something that had long since rotted. _Why_ , she thought. _Why did I notice what I noticed? What kind of person am I that I would notice their weaknesses and be able to manipulate them? How did I know what to do, how to get them to hurt each other?_

The Spy watched as she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, fingers digging into her sides as if she were about to rip herself open. Her body tensed, muscles moving under her skin, and a tide of bumps swept across it. He watched as the muscles in her throat swelled and stomach jumped, as if she were suppressing the urge to gag. " _Vipere_ ," he said gently, and then when she did not respond, he called her again, voice snapping like a whip.

"I'm a bad person," she whispered.

The Spy slapped her cheek just hard enough to sting and her eyes snapped up, glaring, as the faint red blush of his handprint faded. _What cannot be said of her own will_ , he thought, _can be shocked out of her_.

"Fuck you," she hissed.

"Answer the question," he growled, "or suffer."

Behind her, the Sniper snaked a hand out, digging his fingers into the meat of her arm and shaking with the urge to do something more, to punish the drain on his self-control and the aggressive behavior of someone he considered submissive. The Spy let him, aware how close his lover was to violence and that the threat of it would be a useful lever, but reminded himself to provoke a response soon or he would have to figure out how to redirect his lover from what the man would end up doing as his own compulsions took over.

The Cook's mouth flattened into a pale line. "They were fucking idiots," she snapped, spit flying. "Both of them so goddamn proud of themselves and unable to let anyone else be better. That fucking Soldier had no idea the Spy was manipulating him because he was too fucking distracted by his dick and pride to think, and the Spy was too goddamn proud of being a sneaky fucker and what a master he thought he was to pay attention to what it would do to the Soldier's fucking ego when he found out the Spy was using him." She took a deep breath. "They were using me like a fucking toy, like I didn't have any fucking will of my own or any ability to think, and when it looked like I was more afraid of one of them, the other one couldn't fucking handle it. If you're so fucking stupid you think someone who likes it rough can't fucking put two and two together, you fucking deserve to die."

They froze, three bodies like commas on a pair of ragged mattresses.

 _I'm a fucking nightmare_ , the Cook thought. _I'm a fucking monster and death is too fucking good for me_.

 _Mon dieu_ , the Spy thought. _Somewhere, a classified program had missed a valuable asset_.

The Sniper suppressed a brief urge to panic. Behind it, he found admiration and the grudging acknowledgement that he respected her. _I didn't pick up a stray, did I_ , he thought. Reeling her frozen body in gently, he kissed the back of her head. "More ours every day, Birdie-girl. More ours every day."

She let him, slowly thawing, eyes closed and thoughts still echoing. _Death is too good for me_. _A fucking monster among monsters_.

The Spy considered her for a moment, a twisted smile on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle. " _Vipere, mon cher_ , it is guilt, is it not, that most harms us?" Her eyes squeezed together more tightly, a faint sheen from tears making her lashes clump fatly.

"And if I tell you that you have nothing to feel guilty about," he said, running a hand gently down her arm, "you cannot let yourself believe me. It is your whole world that tells you that you are evil, as it tells all of us that we are evil for doing what we must to survive. But perhaps I can tell you this and it will help: the world which tells you that you are evil does not have to face what you have faced. If you had stayed at home, if you had lived an ordinary sort of life and you had persuaded two people to kill themselves then perhaps you would be evil."

The Spy paused, watching her shoulders curling, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut against them all. He watched the Sniper's expression, the frustration at her continued grief at what she had done, and how gently the man was making himself behave toward her.

"But, _Vipere_ , that is not what happened. You are precisely what you had to be to survive, and I find myself increasingly glad they sent you to us and not someone else. This, _Petite_ , is a place where you can belong, as terrible as that may be. It is not the only place you could belong, but we are glad to have you as you are. Exactly, _cher_ , as you are, knowing what you have done and how you feel about it." _And that_ , he added silently, _is a message I can tell the others to repeat to you that even they cannot ruin_.


	12. Chapter 11

The Spy let her ride the tide of her emotions down until she was exhausted, watching tension ripple through her and fade in waves, her body sandwiched between his and the Sniper. He could see his lover was teetering on the brittle edge of frustration, and was grateful that the Cook was silent in her distress, letting the Sniper slowly back away from the edge of violent action as night deepened in the room. When she finally yawned, he clicked his tongue gently to stir them both from introspection.

" _Petite_ , it is time to sleep." He looked past her at the Sniper. "And for you as well, _cher_."

The Sniper made a face and stretched, then sat up. "I need a shower."

The Spy shrugged as the Cook spoke. "Me, too. Lube gets itchy as it dries."

" _Perfait_ ," the Spy said. "I shall go first."

Pushing himself off the mattress, the Spy trotted into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The Sniper shifted behind her and the Cook turned to look at the flat, irritated expression on his face. With effort, she stopped herself from flinching and instead simply watched him. The Sniper sighed, looking down at her, and his face smoothed. She smiled apologetically at him, not quite sure what she was apologizing for, but very sure something merited an apology. The Sniper grumbled and gave her something that vaguely resembled a smile and a shrug, tinged with exhaustion and an obvious attempt to be obliging.

The Cook's eyebrows met and she took a breath, then stopped. Squeezing his hand, she drew back and stretched out on the mattress beside him. When the Spy came out of the shower, he found them both laying on their backs, inches apart, blankly considering the ceiling. The Sniper got up and let himself into the bathroom while the Spy tried to dry himself off with a rag. When the Sniper left the bathroom and she walked into it, he followed her.

" _Vipere_ ," the Spy said, squeezing the ends of his hair into her sink in lieu of a towel, "I will tuck you in but there is a conversation I need to have with our _Bête_ before we sleep, so we will leave you here to sleep."

She made a half-hearted grunt in protest, clearly feigned and exhausted. The Spy stacked both spare mattresses on each other by her bed and, seeing that she had already rolled herself in her blanket, back to the room, padded out of her bedroom behind the Sniper, whose rolling shrug sent them both padding out to the camper for the privacy.

The Spy closed the loose screen door of the camper behind himself with a rasping squeal. "Well," he said, eyeing the increasing frustration tensing his lover's back. "I can see how you feel. Out with it, _Bête_."

The Sniper wheeled about on his heel, taking a sharp breath in. After a tense moment, he spoke, sitting on his bed hard enough to make the springs complain brassily. "Do you think, Sneak, that they sent her in on purpose to have this effect on us all? To make us"—he paused—"touchy again."

The missing subject, how similar his urges were to his BLU counterparts, remained unexpressed. The Spy decided it would be best for the time if it stayed that way, though knew his lover would, at some point, need to rationalize it somehow, to separate himself from his reaction to hearing it.

"It would not surprise me," the Spy said, pulling a chair from the tiny table near the bed and turning it to lean his elbows against the back of the chair as he sat. "You have to admit that we had become"—he paused, searching for the least volatile way to say it—"dull in our routines."

The Sniper snorted. "Dull in our routines? That's delicate. I've seen way too much of you, Sneak, to want diplomacy at a moment like this." He leaned forward slightly, fingers digging into the mattress, dark eyes boring into his lover. "Talk honestly."

"Fine," the Spy said, his voice hardening. "We've been hoping respawn would malfunction and let us finally finish dying. We've been too cowardly to get it over with and die, and too dull to bother to do anything else, the world's longest and most boring suicide. I could have ended this myself with a borrowed charge from our bomber. You could have ended it with a few bullets in the right machinery and people."

"Like a pig in a wallow," the Sniper said, words dropping into the following silence. "Like prisoners on death row, waiting through the last of our appeals."

The Spy stared into his lover's stony expression.

"And what, Sneak," the Sniper said, "are we going to do when she stops being new to us? What are we going to do when she comes to be like us, and becomes just another member of the team?"

The early morning silence stretched between them, broken by the wind whispering around the corners of the camper.

"Perhaps a better question," the Spy finally said, "is how we are to go about doing this forever. The brothers themselves cannot die, and while they live, so do we."

The Sniper's lip curled, springs jangling as he leaned back. "Everyone can die."

They stared at each other.

"Is that really the cure," the Spy said softly. "If we kill them, do we really wish to die?" After a minute, he murmured, "I do not wish to die, _Bête_. Although I greatly wish to enjoy a change of scenery and some variety."

The watchful tension ran out of his lover. "I don't want to die either, Sneak," he said softly. "She's entertaining, and I'm enjoying the variety, but I still wish to be out in the world." His voice softened to a near-whisper, tinged with longing. "It has changed so much."

The Spy grinned at him, his eyes running down the spare form of his lover. " _Oui_ ," he said, his imagination immediately placing the Sniper's spare form on a beach. "And there is not a government in the world that still possesses our identification. Think of the fun we could have taking private work."

The Sniper snorted, his lips turning up. "It would make a great game, seeing how much we could earn together. I wouldn't be surprised if we were millionaires within a year."

They grinned at each other for a moment, mirrored mischief making them momentarily younger.

"Apparently," the Spy said, smile wrinkling the skin near his eyes, "the enemy of immortality is boredom. Did you ever imagine, when you came to this job, that you would be immortal and so afraid of being bored?"

The Sniper bit his lower lip, cutting off a brief, wry chuckle. "Fuck no. I thought I was taking a short contract in a war zone. Months, maybe."

The Spy laughed, a complex sound that was mirth, regret, and the endless surprise of realizing, yet again, that he had been fooled. The Sniper joined him a moment later, helplessly laughing at their unwitting immortality, at their own apathy, and at his own illusions. Eyes prickling, the Spy laughed through the first sting of tears, laughing until his belly was sore and finally winding down.

The Sniper stretched himself out across the small camper bed with a sigh. "I needed that, I think."

The Spy felt himself start laughing again and bit the inside of his cheek, then cleared his throat. " _Moi aussi, Bête_. It appears we have decided to live." He straightened at the hiss and patter of sand hitting the metal wall of the trailer. "A dilemma remains, as does the need to do something about the fact that we have stumbled into immortality."

The Sniper made a contemplative hum, looking at the long line of his lover's chest shadowed against the table light behind him, the pattern of fine scars over his sleekly muscled torso. "The girl first, then, since she is the smaller problem." Tucking his arms behind his head, he looked up at the Spy's face. "She is a mess, isn't she?"

The Spy clicked his tongue. "That is not entirely fair to her, is it? She makes a mess of us, but we were a mess when she came."

The Sniper made a face but refused to respond.

" _Bête_ ," the Spy said chidingly. When the Sniper glared at him, he continued. "In some ways, she is to be thanked for pushing us out of our routine. _Avez le cafard_ , _oui_? Too depressed and apathetic to give any shits."

The Sniper sighed, the muscles of his arms picking themselves into hills on his arms briefly before smoothing down. "Fine, yes."

"Under your skin, yes," the Spy asked, gently. "Perhaps I should tease you—the assassin has something to which the vulnerable girl appeals." He paused, watching his lover flush with ire. "But _Bête_ , even at our most apathetic, I did not think you heartless. You are too passionate for that."

The Sniper growled. "I am not a boy to be so emotional. I do not love the girl."

The Spy shrugged in response, amused by the quick flash of the Sniper's temper. "No one, I suspect, believes you to have declared yourself for the girl, not even she herself. It is not so terrible to want to do something for her." He drummed his fingers against the chair for a moment, shifting restlessly, before he spoke again. "Even if she does not know what she has done, and has done it accidentally."

The Sniper looked up at the ceiling blankly for a moment. "There's really no half measures to what we do. You have to be…" His voice trailed off as he struggled to condense a world of experience into a few words. "You have to be a predator," he finally said. "Or you are prey."

" _Comme ci, comme ҫa_ ," the Spy rumbled, his tenor pleasantly musical. "There is room for some who are not predators, but it is on the fringes. Or she will have to be a… she will be a thing to be guarded." The Spy's hand circled in the air. "But did we think she would take this up as a profession? Does she strike you as a junior assassin? What she did, she did for survival and not for money. Violence for survival is different from the professional murder. One needs so much more emotion for the first, and it only ruins the second."

The Sniper quieted, thinking of how easily she was roused to rage, how passionately she responded to violence, then of the things she had done at the BLU base. The Spy watched his fingers drum on his arms, still curled behind him. "I think," he finally said, cautiously, "that it is possible."

"I also think," he added with a wry smile, "that we are past the point where she will fit easily back into the general population. That one runs a little too hot for it. And we all started somewhere."

The Spy snorted, eyeing his lover. "It came more natural to you than most, did it not?"

"I suppose." The Sniper shifted on the bed. "Killing was not so difficult, not after the first time. The first time, passionate enough and full of mistakes. I'm still surprised no one caught me. Later, it was more about challenge and craft. But it always has been a bit passionate, underneath." He looked over at the Spy, his lips twisting. "Not that one can say, 'I'm killing you for the money and because it gets me hard,' without rumors starting."

The Spy pulled himself off the chair, standing slowly, and grinned down at his lover. "Yes, yes it does, doesn't it? Pros do love to gossip. At least the gossip about who we were is probably quite dead by now, and they are a bit more relaxed now about relationships like ours."

The Sniper patted the bed beside him and the Spy sank down, fitting his head into the hollow of the Sniper's shoulder with a lithe wriggle.

"Whatever," the Spy said, fingers spread across the Sniper's chest, brushing over it to settle around him, "shall we do with our little pupil?"

"Our best," the Sniper replied. "As always."

The Cook slept late, waking at lunch from something that felt, for all purposes, dreamless. The midday light lay golden and thick over her blanket, picking the dust notes out as they danced through the air, spiraling in the breeze. At some point, someone had removed the two mattresses stacked by her bed without waking her. With something like bemusement, she realized that she hadn't slept so well or so deeply for some inexpressibly long time.

 _There is a name_ , she thought, _for people who sleep this deeply in unsafe places. Corpses._

She wasn't sure she liked the idea, that this was home enough to put her so deeply to sleep. Rolling over, she looked up at the pocked ceiling, tracing familiar patterns with a faint shock that they would be familiar enough. A horse-head, a stop sign, a curled up cat—each shape in familiar places over her head. She sat up slowly, and turned her head to consider the door.

Hunger prodded her, but she found herself oddly reluctant to step outside the door, to have to encounter anyone else. Footsteps paused outside her door and moved on, their errant squeal making them the Scout's. In the distance, someone spoke, too distant for anything to be legible outside the barest hint of noise.

Her stomach growled, and with a regretful sigh, she pushed herself off the mattress and padded to her chest of drawers, pulling on the easiest thing she could find. Peering around the edges of the door, she let herself out into the hall. The sound of conversation became clearer as she approached the dining room. She froze there, just outside the door, unable to shake the reflexive urge to hide. With gritted teeth, she made herself step around the edge of the door.


	13. Chapter 12

p class="MsoNoSpacing"span style="font-size: 16pt; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"T/spanspan style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"he table was spread with cards and stacks of poker chips—what appeared to be the tail of an intense game, if the size of the stacks were to be trusted. The Cook watched them joke with each other, tension slowly sliding out of her. They reminded of her grandmother's house, of late night games between the revolving cast of neighbors, relatives, and friends who had occupied the small residential lane around the house. She briefly longed, with a tingling rush that spread warm fingers through her chest, to be a child again, to walk up to the table utterly assured of being able to reach for her grandmother's arms and throw herself into them, into the sweet smell of baby powder and the crepe skin of age. She wanted to know again that those arms would always be there in the way a child knows nothing of the future and does not need to know./span/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"As she walked in, the Soldier folded with a grimace, glaring at the Demo. "I'm out. Are you stacking the deck? That's my fifth shit hand."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Demo chuckled and refused to answer. Beside him, the Pyro frowned into a pair of cards and eyed the five face-up cards on the table next to the deck. The Heavy drummed his fingers atop his discarded hand, glancing up at her and then back to the men around the table. With a half-smile, she realize he was scanning them all for their tells, for the facial expressions and tics that would tell him what they felt about the cards they held. The stack of chips in front of him, she noticed, rivaled the stack in front of the Demo, and either stack was better than twice as tall as any of the others./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"She made a note of it and stopped behind the Soldier, who turned his head to look at her over his shoulder with a brief, familiar smile. "Up now, Rosie? Must have been tired."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook reached out absently to grasp his shoulder for a gentle squeeze as he turned back to the table. On impulse and longing for the friendly camaraderie of her grandmother's table, she sat down in the empty chair to the Soldier's right. "Poker, right? What kind?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Demo cleared his throat, the smug smile slowly fading from his face as he looked at her, uncertainty rushing in behind it. "Oh, just five card stud, lass. This lot's too dumb ta learn anything fancier."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"Rolling his eyes, the Heavy said something that sounded rude in Russian. Continuing in English, he replied, "is the teacher, not the student, to blame when the student wishes to learn but cannot."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Demo ignored the comment and gestured with his chin, eyes on the Pyro's hand. "Well, lad?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Pyro grimaced and folded, raising his hands in disgust over the perpetual cowlick his mask stamped into his unruly hair. With a pleased chuckle, the Demo raked the small pile of chips toward himself. The Cook reached out for the discarded cards and they let her. With a distracted frown, she shuffled, palming and stacking the first card in the deck as she shuffled. In her memory, her grandmother's hands fit over her own neatly as she explained how to tense the muscles on the edges of her palms to hold a card and how to conceal it from sight with the movements of her other hand as she shuffled./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"When the Demo snorted, she looked up./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Lass," he said, the expression on his face a mix of disbelief and amusement, "do yeh not think we can spot a trick shuffle?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"She blushed and looked around the table, gaze finally landing on the Soldier, whose hollow, flushed cheeks and glossy eyes told her he was holding in laughter./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Sorry," she muttered, embarrassed. "I was just thinking about my family."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Demo's eyebrows shot up. "Yehr people make a livin' fleecing tha gulls, did they?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook looked down and reshuffled before answering, brows furrowed. "No. My emgrandmere/em thought it would be prudent to know how it was done. Or perhaps she was suggesting something for the future." Her voice trailed away before she continued loudly, with obvious effort. "No, they did not gamble. Too religious for that. But card games sharpened the mind, or at least that's what she told me."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"She dealt before continuing, memory tickling a small smile onto her face at the lecture her grandmother had given her about minding the rules, and the suspiciously mischievous twinkle in her grandmother's eyes when she followed it with an array of ways to cheat that would have been better suited to hustling. "The funny thing is that they were too religious to gamble but not too religious not to practice gambling." She looked up at the Demo, smile broadening, unaware of the mischief in her own expression. "As long as no money exchanged hands, it wasn't gambling."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"In the ensuing pause, the Demo eyed the smile she had aimed at him. "Sounds like god-fearing folk ta me," he said, his own smile tugging his lips, spurred by memories of the little town of his own childhood. emIf yeh showed up ta mass/em, he thought, emyeh were still a good man no matter what yeh did every other day of tha week/em. "Sounds like a small town. Neighbors watching yeh fer Jesus?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Something like that." She glanced down at her cards and made a face, then froze. A quick survey of the table revealed entirely too many ostentatiously innocent faces for her expression to have gone unnoticed./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"They were not entirely shocked when she won the round with two pairs after her display with the shuffle. The Demo saluted when she laid the pair in her hand down, a flip little gesture that could have been respect or merely acknowledgement of a bluff well done, and took the deck from her firmly when she tried to shuffle again. The Soldier opened his mouth to tease when the Medic walked in, pausing just inside the door to wait for their attention. When they turned, he spoke with a quick bob of his head, a habit from reporting to the head surgeon that he'd never quite been able to rid himself of when nervous./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Miss Pauling called. The BLU team has been… re-assembled, and she expects that they will be able to resume combat in a few days." The Medic looked down at the Cook, his face a study in careful neutrality. "She reiterates her offer to you, whatever it is, and adds that the company has taken the liberty of issuing a bonus for services rendered."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"He watched her face change with an accustomed sting of guilt. The company had too often made him the bearer of news, mostly bad, to make him comfortable playing poker with the rest of the team. They, for their part, viewed his aloofness as arrogance and not exhaustion with being a symbol for what the company was doing to them all. He let them, knowing to his regret that their distance made it easier for him to play his part and that it kept the privacy that he needed./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook winced and looked down at the table. A price tag on her services and experiences, the company no doubt considered itself clear of any debt to her, as if money could balance the books. emThey've put a price on me/em, she thought with an uneasy Should I even be surprised anymore?/em/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""It's too early," the Soldier said, his arm creeping over her shoulders to pull her to his side. "Tell them it's too early."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"She looked up at the underside of his jaw, bone curving harshly to the point of his chin where it jutted with his anger. "Do you know what the deal was?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""No," he said, shutting his mouth with a snap, the muscle in his jaw moving as his teeth ground./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""It's about what you'd think," she said softly. "They can't find a replacement for me at the other base yet, and apparently I've had a positive impact on performance at this base, so they'd like to extend my services at the other base every other week until they find another…" She trailed off, unable to think of a single nice way to refer to what she was doing. She remembered the Spy poking her chest, chiding her for what she said about herself and what she was doing at the Is there a single positive thing I can say/em, she thought. emIs there any way to refer to this that doesn't make me feel dirty?/em/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Soldier took a sharp breath in, his arm tightening around her shoulders. Before he could respond, the Medic spoke. "Like us," he said, his voice gaining an edge, "she is an employee before she is… whatever she is." The words "to us" lay unspoken, but no less felt for it./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Soldier swore and she sat up with a sigh, reaching out to squeeze his arm as she moved. His hand crept toward hers under the table and she laced her fingers through his, then pulled them away, slowed with regret. The Medic sat down with a thump and put his elbows on the table, a breech in manners and reserve rare to him./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Solly," he repeated softly, "we are employees before we are anything else. She will come back."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Soldier's face mottled, but he remained silent, frustrated and embarrassed at the public display of his emotions. The Medic watched the color chase itself across his face with a combination of sympathy and his own frustration, again the bearer of bad news./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""I'll be fine," the Cook said gently, then took a breath to explain, to try and comfort him./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Soldier cut her off, voice brittle and crackling as his face turned down to stare angrily into hers. "Fine? You'll be fine? You'll be fine there? With those fuckers. After what they did, after what they let those bastards do?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"She looked down at the table, unable to answer. He looked at the pale line of her scalp, breath harsh and echoing in the silent room. After a moment, the Soldier stood up, chair squealing against the concrete floor, and stomped out./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook flinched as the door slammed against the wall with his passing. The Medic alone was close enough to hear what she murmured, and half-reached for her before flattening his hand on the table./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"emPlease/emspan style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;", she breathed, staring blindly into the burl of the wooden tabletop. emPlease, no more/em./span/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Medic looked at his partner across the table and was surprised to see a brief flash of sympathy on it as the Heavy looked at her bent head. The Heavy's eyes lifted to find his lover's, and the expression wavered before settling on his face. emIt is hard/em, the Medic thought, a wan smile on his face that the Heavy matched, emto stay angry at her, even for you. We have, at least, been spared selling our bodies for this, though we have certainly sold our deaths/em. The Heavy glanced at her with a small nod and infinitesimal shrug, one of his hands rolling over gracefully to tell his lover that he could, if he wished./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Medic reached out for her hand slowly, as he might reach to touch an animal whose intentions he did not know. She let him take it and looked up, startled, then over to the Heavy, whose deliberately casual shrug startled her further./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;""I am not," the Heavy rumbled, "without sympathy, /spanemMышка/em." He paused, deciding, then continued. "Is something you should know about these things. Can carry home in yourself. Can carry privacy in yourself. If you cannot control where body goes, can control where mind goes. Mind is yours. Body…" His voice faltered and he cleared his throat. "Body may not always be." As the sound of his words faded, he looked around the room, daring the remaining mercenaries to respond. To his surprise, the Demo reached out gingerly and patted him on the back, startling an initial flinch from the Heavy before he settled back into his chair, making the wood groan./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing" /p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Pyro eyed the Heavy's expression, his hand creeping over to the Heavy's hand on the table. With the tiniest brush, the Pyro touched the Heavy's open palm. When it did not move, the Pyro gingerly patted his hand once before sitting back to fold his hands on the table again, waiting./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing" /p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook took a sharp breath in through her nose and sat up. "Well," she said, false cheer making her voice harsh. "Did they say when they want me to go?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing" /p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Miss Pauling said she'd see you on the BLU base tomorrow," the Medic said, releasing her hand with a squeeze. "emKätzchen/em, if it is in your nature to worry about Solly, don't. He flares and then he is fine. He does not brood."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing" /p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Demo cleared his throat, tapping the table with two fingers idly. "I dinnae know about that. But he won't hold it against yeh, lass. Not once he's had time to cool off. Tha man has a temper like old dynamite but he likes yeh too much ta stay mad."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"Watching her face fall, he added. "Lass, yeh dinnae have ta deal with him alone. I'll get him good and pissed and let him cry it out while yer gone."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The grateful look she aimed at him came with a smile that hovered somewhere between genuine and suspiciously watery. She reached out and he let her capture his hand. Her thanks was warm, and hovered on the edge of being audible./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"emIf all this isnae some sort of mutual madness/emspan style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;", the Demo thought ruefully. emI dinnae know what is/em. Despite the thought, he felt oddly gratified by it, by the fact that she was smiling at him, for him./span/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook sniffled once, then nodded toward the cards. "Play another round?"/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Should I deal yeh in, Doc?" The Demo looked over at the Medic, expecting to be politely and firmly refused. To his surprise, the Medic gestured impatiently for him to deal. The Demo dealt another round, the cards sticky and yellowed with age./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;" align="center" /p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"The Cook was not surprised to see the Soldier's empty chair at dinner, but was stung by it despite her lack of surprise. She was stung again when the Soldier did not say goodbye, avoiding her entirely while she packed a small suitcase, not coming as she walked slowly toward the main doors of the base, getting a hug, handshake, or simple squeeze from other mercenaries as she passed them on their way through their morning routines. The doors opened too soon, spilling her out into the pale morning light./span/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"And then it was just her, dragging the snarled wheels of a floral suitcase through the sand, gravel, and sparse weeds between the bases, stopping to give the suitcase a shake and unclog its wheels./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"And then it was just her, walking through the front doors of the BLU base with a shiver and stopping just inside, looking down the halls, awash in the memory of the BLU Soldier carrying her down that hall, of running desperately from the BLU Spy and being pulled back, choked by his silk tie. She could still feel it, her fingers rising unconsciously to her neck. She flinched when her fingertips brushed the tender skin above her pulse, hand flying back down to her side./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"Miss Pauling cleared her throat, watching the despair on the Cook's face and, for the first time in decades, feeling guilt sting her. "If you'll come with me," she said gently, and set off down the empty hall, her heels clicking against the concrete floor./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"The Cook followed her wordlessly to an empty room, pulling the suitcase just inside the door and stopping, dumb./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""Enough," Miss Pauling said, voice soft. "It's not as bad as you think. We've informed them that anything you do besides cooking is your choice, and that you don't have to be billeted here if they don't behave. The three new team members are a bit more… modern… in their views, and you should not have the same problems with them as you did with the others."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"When the Cook didn't respond, Miss Pauling's voice gained volume and became sharp. "Enough. You aren't here to feel sorry for yourself, and it could be considerably worse." She watched the Cook straighten and turn, angry./p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing""That's better," Miss Pauling said. "Trust me, it's not the end of the world. I'll stay long enough to introduce you around and remind them of their obligations. Follow me."/p  
p class="MsoNoSpacing"Furious, cheeks flushed, the Cook stalked along beside Miss Pauling. As they neared the living room, she could hear a low murmur, the team members talking to one another. Miss Pauling tactfully paused, letting the Cook steel herself, before letting them both into the room./p 


End file.
